9/11: Trying to Connect the Dots

Steven Jones to take early retirement from BYU

2006-10-20T22:24:00.000-04:00

Letter to the Editor by Steven Jones:

I stand firmly against the war in Iraq and any war of aggression.

I support scientific scrutiny of the events of 9/11/2001, a day which will live in infamy. I speak as a private citizen of the United States.

“In a democracy we can renounce war and proclaim peace. There is opportunity for dissent. Many have been speaking out and doing so emphatically. That is their privilege. That is their right, so long as they do so legally… We can give our opinions on the merits of the situation as we see it...” (Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley, LDS General Conference, 6 April 2003.)

Wholeheartedly agreeing, I am exercising that right and that privilege. “A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion,” (New York Times, 11 Oct. 2006) I renounce these killings in the Middle Eastern wars.

We must insist on complete answers to questions about what really happened on September 11th, why there were no air defenses that day, and why we have gone to war in the Middle East. These issues transcend party politics. These yearnings for understanding of 9/11 and the wars that followed take us to the core of our heritage as Americans -- I support the Constitution of the United States. I am very concerned about those elected officials who would engage in pre-emptive war rather than “common defense” to “repel invasions” (Article I), compromise our rights against torture and cruel punishments (8th Amendment), take away the right of habeas corpus (Article I), and diminish the freedom to speak out without fear of reprisals (1st Amendment).

Two structural engineering professors in Switzerland have recently spoken out as I have also done, declaring that explosives were with “utmost probability” responsible for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on September 11th. "WTC7 was with the utmost probability brought down by explosives", said one. [Tages-Anzeiger, 9/9/2006]

After seeing the collapse of World Trade Center 7 (see wt7.net), many instinctively want to know why this 47-story skyscraper, which was never hit by a plane, collapsed completely seven hours after the WTC Towers had collapsed. How could this happen? The 9/11 Commission report fails to mention the collapse of WTC7. Federal laboratories have not officially answered yet. FEMA explains how fire might initiate a collapse, then admits, “Our best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence.” Is it a crime, then, to consider an alternative hypothesis, that explosives were used?

I invite you to study this matter for yourself. Please read the peer-reviewed articles published here: www.Journalof911Studies.com . This Journal is supported by the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which I co-chair, and considers the “official theory” of what happened on 9/11 as well as alternative explanations. One of my scientific papers on 9/11 issues is published in this Journal (as well as in a book edited by Professors David Ray Griffin and Peter Scott.) The paper therein by Joseph Firmage explores evidences that US intelligence knew in advance that the hijackers were coming and that the attacks were “allowed to happen,” to justify wars in the Middle East. At least ten nations are on record as having warned the current administration that terrorist attacks were imminent, shortly before 9/11.

If another “9/11-like event” is “allowed to happen” in the near future, do you not suppose that it will be blamed this time on Iran or Syria, followed by a swift and deadly attack on the country blamed? Can you not imagine that a military draft will follow next, with college students constrained to enter the military, and handed rifles to go and kill people in the Middle East, by the tens of thousands?

Because of my concern for college-age students I have taught and loved for decades, I am motivated to speak out emphatically against what I judge – after thorough study and reflection – to be terrible wars, wars of aggression, founded on deceptions.

Steven E. Jones

Ph.D. Physicist

Co-Chair, Scholars for 9/11 Truth

I got a Myspace!

2006-09-01T10:07:00.000-04:00

If you know any good bands on myspace, hook me up! <---click to read my blog, dammit!

errr...maybe you should click on the link above in the subject of this post and add me as a friend, first. (smile!)

Crazy

2006-08-27T19:40:00.000-04:00

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy Lyrics

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so crazy about that day
Even your emotions had an echo in so much space

And when you're out there - without care
Yeah I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me Crazy?
Does that make me Crazy?
Does that make me Crazy?
Possibly

And I hope that you are havin' the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice

Come on now who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you
think you are, ha ha ha, bless your soul
you really think you're in control

well
I think you're Crazy
I think you're Crazy
I think you're Crazy
Just like me

My heroes had the heart to put their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinkin' I wanna be like them.

Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And there's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done

But maybe I'm Crazy
Maybe you're Crazy
Maybe we're Crazy
Probably

The Government's 9/11 Facade is Crumbling

2006-08-13T08:46:00.000-04:00

The Government's 9/11 Facade is Crumbling

by John Perry

http://www.opednews.com

First things first:

Any time two or more people are knowingly involved in the commission of a crime, there is, by definition, a conspiracy. This is not a theory, folks. It's a stone-cold, undeniable fact. So the real question about 9/11 is not whether there was a conspiracy, but indeed exactly who the conspirators are.

It really is this simple:

1) Either 19 guys with box cutters, led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, were able to hijack four major airliners, fly them with expert precision (even though flight instructors say they could barely even fly Cessnas), avoid the most sophisticated air defense system in the history of the world and hit three of four targets in New York and Washington, killing nearly 3000 people and thus pulling off history's most spectacular terrorist attack,

Or:2) A rouge criminal element within our own government, with the means, motive and standing to benefit tremendously, both financially and politically, either helped to make it happen or fully orchestrated it themselves.

By the way, about that guy hiding in the cave in Afghanistan that supposedly led the hijackers: In June of this year, when questioned about why Osama bin Laden's wanted poster did not mention the 9/11 attacks, an official from the FBI stated that they had "no hard evidence" of his involvement (Google "FBI no hard evidence").

9/11 Truth Movement Gaining Steam

Nineteenth century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said the following about truth:

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Similarly, Gandhi said this:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

The importance of America and the world accepting and reacting accordingly to the horrible truth about 9/11 cannot be overstated. If you think it doesn't affect you because you didn't lose anybody on 9/11, or you don't have any loved ones (civilians or military) in the midst of George W. Bush's subsequent and utterly bogus "war on terror", I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to rethink your position.

We must not only be concerned with exacting proper justice for the mass murder of 9/11. We must also be concerned with ending the tide of tyranny that has begun to wash over us as a result of that tragic day, threatening freedom, democracy, and the world as we know it. They who seek to rule us with an iron fist, pretending to protect us by destroying our liberty, must be told in no uncertain terms that we the people thoroughly reject their despotism, in favor of the constitutional democracy that our country has lived by for more than 200 years.

Thankfully, many more are beginning to awaken to the truth of 9/11, and that can only be good. But we have a long way to go. There are, as you might imagine, many websites dedicated to this issue. If I could recommend a single site to point people to in the effort to grow our movement, it would be Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Bookmark it and refer to it often. You will also reach many other sites from there.

The single most influential voice of the 9/11 truth movement is unquestionably Alex Jones. Visit his sites here and here.

In June of this year, Jones conducted a 9/11 symposium that was broadcast multiple times on CSPAN. Put 90 minutes aside and watch it here.

In addition to the Jones symposium and its multiple broadcasts on CSPAN, two national polls have recently come out (one just last week) that show very significant doubt of the "official story" of 9/11 among the American people, indicating rapid mainstream growth of the 9/11 truth movement.

A Scripps Howard / Ohio University poll, released last week, reveals that 36 percent of Americans now believe it is either "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that the government was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Additionally, a Zogby International Poll, released in May, revealed that 42 percent of Americans believe that the (9/11 Commission and the government are "covering up".

These numbers might seem surprising, given the precious little positive exposure our movement has received from the mainstream media to this point (with the exception, of course, of the excellent coverage of the Jones 9/11 Symposium by CSPAN). But I believe what they actually reveal is that as people continue to witness things like the mountain of Bush lies that launched the disaster that is Iraq, his pathetic lack of any kind of coherent plan to get us out, warrantless wiretapping, secret examining of our banking records, bogus signing statements, his belief that he is above the law, and his obvious contempt for the Constitution ("Stop throwing the Constitution in my face...It's just a goddamned piece of paper"), they're putting two and two together, questioning everything, doing their homework and learning the truth for themselves.

Imagine where these poll numbers will go if the mainstream media really starts giving the truth movement some legitimate coverage.

From the Zogby poll, incidentally, it's also very interesting to note that 43 percent were not aware of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11. This was a 47-story building that did have small fires burning in various places, but was not hit by any airplane, nor by either of the falling twin towers, yet collapsed straight down, at free-fall speed, into its own footprint at around 5:30 that afternoon. There has never been an official explanation given for the collapse of building 7, and the 9/11 Commission completely ignored the collapse in its final report.

Is it not disturbing that a 47-story building became the third steel frame structure in history to completely collapse on its own, the first two being WTC towers 1 and 2 earlier that same day, and the 9/11 Commission didn't care enough to even comment on it? Many have burned for as long as several days, but no steel frame building anywhere in the world had ever collapsed due to fire before 9/11, and none have collapsed due to fire since 9/11.

Pentagon False Flag

As far as the Pentagon is concerned, there is no concrete evidence of a 757 crash. Something obviously did hit the building, of course, but photos indicate that it was something much smaller. A 757 is 155 feet long, 44 feet high (to the top of the rear stabilizer), with a 124 foot wingspan and two engines that are each 8 feet in diameter, each weighing 6 tons. The building is 71 feet tall.

The initial Pentagon impact (before the partial building collapse) left a round hole approximately 16 feet in diameter, with fully intact windows directly above and to each side. There was no initial damage to the building where the wings, engines or tail of a 757 would have hit.

Whatever really did hit the Pentagon is no doubt seen clearly on the security videotapes that were confiscated from the nearby gas station and Sheraton National Hotel by the FBI within minutes of the impact on the morning of 9/11, which is why they have never been released. Doesn't it seem odd that our TV screens were plastered with thousands of images of planes flying into the World Trade Center in the first few days after 9/11, yet we have never been shown the full motion video of the Pentagon impact that is known to exist? What are they hiding?

The PNAC Factor

No story on this issue would be complete without mentioning the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative, pro-war "think tank", hell bent on mobilizing America's massive military strength to serve their own worldwide imperial mission.

PNAC counts among its membership such prominent people as Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secreatry Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney's former chief of staff Scooter Libby, Rumsfeld's former assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (who now heads the World Bank), and Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida and the president's brother.

In September of 2000, PNAC issued a report called Rebuilding America's Defenses (you'll need a pdf file reader – get it free from Adobe), which is basically their war manifesto.

Wolfowitz is said to be the main architect of the manifesto, which is based on a document called "The Wolfowitz Doctrine", written in 1992 by then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Wolfowitz and his then assistant Libby.

Of course, PNAC couldn't initiate their plan without having people in very prominent positions in government to pull the right strings. That's why Cheney, when tapped to lead the search for George W. Bush's vice presidential running mate for the 2000 election, chose himself. He then of course made sure his long time, war mongering, neocon friend Don Rumsfeld (they go back to the Nixon administration together) was inserted as the new Defense Secretary, another key position. Wolfowitz and Libby followed to fill their respective positions in the new Bush government.

See my original article on 9/11 – "The Ugliest Truth", for details on the cozy little 35 year friendship between Rummy and Uncle Dick, as well as many links for you to explore regarding the truth about 9/11.

The problem the PNAC had, even with all the right people in place, was that they couldn't launch a war and initiate their plan just because they wanted to. The people would never go for it, and Congress would never fund it. They needed an excuse.

Indeed, this is something they themselves recognized. On page 51 of "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (again, issued in September of 2000, one year before 9/11), you will find the following quote:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

So once again, I ask you:

19 pissed off guys with boxcutters, whose only apparent benefit was the supposed 72 virgins waiting for them when they got to the other side, or a rouge criminal element within our own government, with the means, motive and standing to benefit tremendously, both financially and politically?

May the truth soon be revealed for the entire world to see.

www.johnperryonline.com

John Perry is a radio personality, freelance writer and citizen activist. Reach him directly via his website, johnperryonline.com

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Leafletting Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center"

2006-08-08T21:27:00.000-04:00

New Oliver Stone movie about 9/11 brings Americans together

2006-08-04T09:29:00.000-04:00

New Oliver Stone movie about 9/11 brings Americans together

Steve Hammons graduated from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, with concentration areas in communications (journalism focus) and health education (psycholgy focus). Hammons is the author of two novels about a U.S. Government and military joint-service research team investigating unusual phenomena. MISSION INTO LIGHT and the sequel LIGHT'S HAND introduce readers to the ten women and men of the "Joint Reconnaissance Study Group" and their exciting adventures exploring the unknown. Both novels are available from the Barnes & Noble Web site, bn.com, and other booksellers worldwide.

Steve Hammons
August 2, 2006

Oliver Stone’s new film WORLD TRADE CENTER, starring Nicholas Cage as a New York Port Authority police sergeant on 9/11, has won praise for depicting the tragedy, trauma and courage during and after the 9/11 attacks.

Does this portrayal of the pain, suffering and heroism of that day conflict with allegations that the 9/11 plot involved an inside conspiracy that has not yet been fully revealed?

There does not seem to be any reason why these views should be in conflict. The search for the truths about 9/11 obviously includes the horrible deaths and suffering of the victims, pain felt by their families as well as the honor and sacrifice displayed by police officers, firefighters and many others.

HONORING THE FALLEN, PURSUING JUSTICE

Whether there is any truth to suspicions, indications and circumstances that point to an “inside job” conspiracy, such views in many ways seem to be part of the same universal reactions to 9/11: Shock, sadness and determination to get to the bottom of the events on that terrible day.

The idea that people could plan and carry out an attack that killed thousands of innocents on 9/11 through a highly complex plot stirred anger in us and a need to hold those responsible accountable.

As an immediate result of the 9/11 attacks, military operations were launched against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Shortly after, the invasion of Iraq was begun. Though the connection between 9/11 and Iraq’s former leadership has certainly been called into question, Americans were told that there was a connection.

The American people believed that anyone connected to the 9/11 plot should be pursued and punished.

This is the same motivation driving many Americans who support the “9/11 Truth Movement,” a substantial portion of the American population who suspect or believe that there was an inside and yet to be fully uncovered conspiracy to create, facilitate or allow a “New Pearl Harbor.”

They also believe that those involved in the complex plot of the 9/11 attacks should be pursued and brought to justice because of this terrible crime that killed innocent people and the courageous cops and firefighters who responded.

POINTS OF AGREEMENT

What are some of the basic common denominators that we all believe about the 9/11 attacks and those beliefs or suspicions of the 9/11 Truth Movement?

- Conspirators, some identified and perhaps some not, believed that the hijacking of passenger planes and crashing them into major targets would further their cause or causes.

- The plot focused on the mass murder of thousands of Americans and damage to U.S. landmarks.

- The conspiracy included terrorists infiltrating the U.S., avoiding detection by CIA, NSA, FBI and other law enforcement authorities, as well as roving intelligence agents from other countries who operate within the U.S. and internationally.

- The plan required the ability to navigate and pilot airliners into targets in a precise manner.

- U.S. air defenses needed to be overcome through stealth and confusion. The multiple air defense training exercises underway on 9/11, though not known to the hijackers, contributed to the confusion.

- The shock and horror of the attacks would have the desired affect of making the American people feel vulnerable, thereby causing fear in the U.S. population.

- The innocent people who were killed on 9/11 are a tragic loss. Burned alive, forced to jump out of skyscrapers, crushed by rubble, killed when their planes crashed. Cold-blooded murder.

- The police officers, firefighters, paramedics, military personnel, air traffic control officials and many others responded honorably and bravely in the face of an overwhelming crisis.

Of course, there are many other details about the attacks and events leading up to and after them. Some are widely accepted, some debated, some apparently covered up, some speculated about and some still creating confusion and possible deception.

FILM FACES PAST, HELPS PREPARE FOR FUTURE

Regardless of the accuracy of all of claims made by those in the growing 9/11 Truth Movement, most Americans can agree that the effort by Stone in his new film is a worthwhile one.

The overwhelming truth of 9/11 is that it was a horrible crime, like other horrible crimes when innocent people are killed. WORLD TRADE CENTER brings this truth to us in a way that is clear and necessary.

Necessary because an attack like 9/11 may happen again. It may be even more severe. The anger and determination of those who hate the policies of the U.S. Government and do not like some aspects of the culture of America have only grown in recent years, and for many reasons.

Those who want to manipulate the American people and Congress through violence and fear, through attacking our liberties, our Constitution and Bill of Rights are still a threat. These may be enemies foreign and domestic.

Revisiting and more fully understanding the 9/11 attacks is necessary because it has been nearly five years since that day, and memories do fade. And we sometimes want to repress and forget terrible things we have seen in our lives.

It may be helpful to look back to that day to consider all that has happened since 9/11: Large numbers of U.S. military deaths and severe injuries in the open-ended war in Iraq, new laws and policies affecting fundamental elements of our democracy and many other developments, some positive and some quite disturbing.

The courage and dedication Stone depicts in the movie are also things we should remember. Remember and cultivate these qualities. Because they too, may be needed as we go forward to strengthen and protect our country, uncover the full truth of the 9/11 plot and bring all of those responsible to justice.

L.A. panel discussion on 9/11 on c-span saturday, 8 pm EST

2006-07-29T01:21:00.000-04:00

Cspan's schedule now confirms that the L.A. panel discussion on 9/11 will be broadcast Saturday night at 8 p.m. EST. This is the main CSpan channel, not book tv or another, less-viewed, channel (even David Ray Griffin's talk wasn't broadcast on the main CSpan channel).

Webster Tarpley has this message to the 9/11 truth movement (via email):

Dear Friends --

The Sunday panel discussion from the Alex Jones Los Angeles conference will reportedly be telecast on C-SPAN this coming Saturday evening at 8pm and 11pm eastern time.

This discussion includes Alex Jones, Professor Steven Jones, Col. Robert Bowman, Professor James Fetrzer, and myself.

The mere fact that it has been scheduled pays tribute to the
growing strength of our 9/11 truth movement.

I urge you to build the maximum audience for this important event, which represents our best opportunity of counteracting the escalation of the Middle East and North Korean crises towards thermonuclear World War III, by means a strong dose of 9/11 truth.

I call upon each of you to put aside other considerations for the next 48 hours and to mobilize all available forces to make this a turning point in world history. Let it be seen by 100,000,000 Americans, and we can turn the world back from the brink of the abyss.

Webster G. Tarpley"

Let's rally behind Webster's call to maximize viewership.

posted by George Washington (at 911blogger.com)

Link <--click and watch now!

David Griffin Replies to NY Times "Conspiracy Theories 101"

2006-07-28T10:57:00.000-04:00

Conspiracy Theories 101

David Griffin Replies to NY Times "Conspiracy Theories 101"

In “Conspiracy Theories 101” (Op-Ed, July 22), Stanley Fish gives an idiosyncratic interpretation of academic freedom, limiting it to the freedom to decide what to study. It does not include, in his view, the freedom to “embrace and urge” a viewpoint in the classroom, because to do this is to “proselytize,” to “indoctrinate,” to engage in “partisan advocacy.”

If universities were to enforce this restrictive interpretation, it would mean that biology professors could not explain their reasons for accepting evolutionary theory rather than “creation science”; physics professors could not profess their belief in (or against) the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory; and so on.

Fish would surely protest that he did not mean anything so absurd. He meant his restriction to apply only to political questions, as shown by his indications that what professors cannot do is promote “partisan political ideals” and “urge political action.” It is on this basis that he would argue that professors should not be allowed to tell their students that they believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration.

However, even with this less obviously absurd interpretation, Fish’s position is untenable. The question of who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks is a purely factual question, and if professors are prohibited from giving their answers to some such questions, academic freedom has been seriously curtailed.

Fish would presumably reply that answering this factual question by pointing the finger at the Bush administration would have political implications (“throw the criminals out”). This would mean, however, that professors could not endorse the official theory, because this endorsement would also have political implications (“don’t throw them out, because they are not criminals”). Would Fish really suggest firing all professors who have let their students know that they accept the official account?

Fish has raised a red herring. All sorts of questions about which professors routinely and rightly express opinions, such as the evolutionary nature of our universe, have political implications. Fish’s criterion would result in professors being gagged on most questions of importance.

The appropriate question to ask about professors who give their opinions about 9/11 in the classroom, whether to embrace or reject the official theory, is the standard one: Do they do so in an academically responsible manner, supporting their opinions with evidence in a way that could be defended before their peers?

David Ray Griffin

Project Censored: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. Government for 9/11

2006-07-25T11:33:00.000-04:00

(#9) Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. Government for 9/11

SCOOP.CO.NZ, November 2003
Title: “911 Victim’s Wife Files RICO Case Against GW Bush”
Author: Philip J. Berg

SCOOP.CO.NZ, December 2003
Title: “Widow’s Bush Treason Suit Vanishes”
Author: W. David Kubiak

Faculty Evaluator: Andy Merrifield, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Amelia Strommen

Ellen Mariani lost her husband, Louis Neil Mariani, on 9/11 and is refusing the government’s million-dollar settlement offer. Louis Neil Mariani, a passenger, died when United Air Lines flight 175 was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Ellen Mariani has studied the facts of the day for nearly two years and has come to believe that the White House “intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen” in order to launch the “War on Terrorism.” Her lawyer, Phillip Berg, former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, who filed a 62-page complaint in federal district court charging that President Bush and officials, including but not limited to, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Ashcroft: (1) had adequate foreknowledge of 911, yet failed to warn the country or attempt to prevent it; (2) have since been covering up the truth of that day; (3) have therefore abetted the murder of plaintiff’s husband and violated the Constitution and multiple laws of the United States; and (4) are thus being sued under the Civil Racketeering, Influences, and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act for malfeasant conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death.

Berg plans to call former federal employees with firsthand knowledge and expertise in military intelligence to provide a foundation for the RICO Act charge. Mariani intends to prove that the defendants have engaged in a “pattern of criminal activity and obstruction of justice” in violation of the public trust and laws of the United States, thrusting our nation into an endless war on terror in order to achieve personal and financial gains.

The suit documents the detailed forewarnings from foreign governments and FBI agents; the unprecedented delinquency of our air defense; the inexplicable half hour dawdle of our Commander in Chief at a primary school after hearing the nation was under deadly attack; the incessant invocation of national security and executive privilege to suppress the facts; and the obstruction of all subsequent efforts to investigate the disaster. It concludes that compelling evidence will be presented in this case, through discovery, subpoena power and testimony, that defendants failed to act to prevent 9/11, knowing the attacks would lead to an international war on terror.

Berg believes that Defendant Bush is invoking a long standard operating procedure of national security and executive privilege claims to suppress the basis of this lawsuit.

On November 26, 2003, a press conference was set up to discuss the full implications of these charges. Only FOX News attended the conference and taped 40 minutes, however, the film was never aired. W. David Kubiak asks, “When you present documented charges of official treachery behind the greatest national security disaster in modern history, and the press doesn’t show, doesn’t listen, and doesn’t write, what is being communicated?”

UPDATE BY W. DAVID KUBIAK: Three thousand unresolved deaths, strong evidence of treason, and a horizon of endless war still remain matters of capital concern. To this date, the scenario of complicity alleged in Ellen Mariani's landmark RICO suit remains the most cogent and credible 9/11 narrative ever offered to an America raised on Court TV.

Her case lays out the facts and logic so clearly that even ordinary folks can "get it" and start waking up their own. That is this story's unique and mortal danger, and the reason Big Media still shun it to this day.

The 9/11 Commission's maximal presumption of "failure" and "incompetence" spawns wildly more trivial questions than an inquest that does not rule out foreknowledge or complicity. The commission perforce dithers over policy issues, miscommunications, organizational defects, and a tragic litany of regrettable (but blameless!) bureaucratic mistakes.

Examining those same 9/11 facts from a detective's point of view — as an unsolved and as yet quite successful crime —exposes far deeper concerns. The prime questions now become prosecutorial and focus attention on the critical issues of Motive, Opportunity and Means. Who ultimately gained most from the attacks? Who had the power to commit, permit or abet them? Who spotted or created the chance for them to occur?

Ellen's case is historic simply because it was the first to apply these obvious questions, especially "cui bono?" —who really profited? — to all the 9/11 news of recent years. Last summer her reading of the official story's lies and contradictions sparked an unprecedented "racketeering!" shazam, but given her elemental Law & Order approach to the facts at hand, any country sheriff might have made the same call.

Today in light of this year's revelations from Paul O'Neill, Richard Clark and Sibel Edmonds, Ellen's early attempts at connecting the dots — between the war-hungry neocons' public longing (in September 2000) for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" and the subsequent ignored warnings, quashed inquiries and crippled air defenses that finally made their dream come true — all appear pattern perfect thus far.

Since Ellen's charges imply not just criminal conspiracy, but also literal treason, they are fast reviving a long ailing impeachment debate. An April 2004 national Retro poll showed that 39% of the public favored a Bush impeachment if only for his Iraq war lies. This growth of popular outrage was remarkable but hardly actionable since Impeachment Articles must issue from the same feckless House of Reps that signed off on the war. However, as Bush's polls and credibility continued to plummet and GOP solons watched his coattails turn to lead, it became more plausible that a survivalist few might recognize that in 9/11 at least, they shared no collective guilt, and be more willing to swap doomed leaders for their own electoral skins.

By May 2004 such intuitions were starting to bubble up in the anti-war zeitgeist, partially inspired by loud 9/11 truth demands from Ed Asner, Howard Zinn, the US Green Party, theologian David Ray Griffin, and Commission-disillusioned victim family groups. These lofty calls were further reinforced by rather amazing facts on the ground. On May 26th the Toronto Star reported on a national poll showing that 63 per cent of Canadians believed the U.S. government had "prior knowledge of the plans for September 11th, and failed to take appropriate action."

To galvanize this awareness into action, movement leaders turned to Ellen's RICO suit as an ideal impeachment template because it could flush the entire puppeteer crew and not just Howdy Dubya from the stage. It also held the promise of a national "teachable moment" as the whole military-petro-industrial backdrop of the crime at last heaved into view. Finally, 9/11 impeachment offered progressives a far more energizing course of Bush-lethal action than half-hearted huzzahs for the stay-the-course mantra and globalization banzais of the Kerry campaign.

All of this ferment will doubtless be peaking as Project Censored 2005 hits the stands. If you want to join in and help remake history, first read Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor," or Nafeez Ahmed's, "War on Freedom." Then check in at , and find something patriotic (in the old sense) to do.

UPDATE BY PHILIP J. BERG, ESQ.: The tragedy of “911” is the most significant event of our lifetimes. It is a great honor for this story to be selected. It is our firm belief that the RICO lawsuit we filed is one of the most significant cases in our history. To date, the Bush Administration has done more to diminish individual rights than any other administration in 225 years. With the enactment of the Stabilization Act and Patriot Act I, the attempted enactment of Patriot Act II, the photographing and fingerprinting of individuals entering the United States from certain countries and the planned “color coding” of everyone in the United States by the summer of 2004, “1984” is becoming a reality today, twenty years after the date it was projected. “911” has provided the pretext for the global military expansion we are seeing today, with its enormous costs in lives, federal funding and environmental damage.

After speaking around the country, we have found that people are amazed at the lack of media coverage of the RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] lawsuit filed on behalf of Ellen Mariani and all law-abiding citizens of the United States and the world. The mainstream press has ignored our RICO lawsuit as well as most aspects of “911” until recently. But Bush’s arrogance in placing pictures of “911” in his re-election ads, along with the continued stonewalling of the “911 Commission” and the ineffectiveness of the “911 Commission,” has now brought this story to the forefront.

RICO was created in the 1960s by Congress to go after the mafia, the mob. It is our position that there is a “mob” in the Bush White House. When the events of “911” are investigated and when the “right” questions are posed, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that “911” occurred with the complicity of Bush and his administration.

The RICO lawsuit is the best available vehicle for bringing all of the overwhelming, independent research concerning “911” to the point where the “truth of 911” will be revealed.

During the six months since the RICO lawsuit was filed, we have been involved in procedural issues. We have therefore withdrawn the case from Philadelphia and re-filed it in Federal Court in Washington, DC, so that the events of “911” can be in front of the Court as soon as possible.

Our updated website can be reviewed daily for developments in the RICO lawsuit. Our petition, available on the website, is important for two reasons: 1) signing it shows support for the “truth of 911;” and 2) more important, reading the comments from the hearts of individuals around the world serves – like the writings of Anne Frank - to help people realize the actual effects of “911.” We feel it is essential for the mainstream and independent media to report the “truth of 911,” the most important event of our lifetimes. It must be reveled now, not for forty years from now, as has occurred with other major events in history.

Other pro-active groups where the RICO lawsuit is referenced, include:
www.911truth.org, www.911visibility.org, www.septembereleventh.org, www.digitalstylecreations.com, www.tomflocco.com, www.cooperativeresearch.org, www.911citizenswatch.org, www.911independentcommission.org, www.fromthewilderness.com, www.unansweredquestions.org, www.askquestions.org, www.scoop.co.nz.

INSIDE JOB: Unmasking the Myth of 9/11, by Jim Marrs
Preface by Ellen Mariani
With major excerpts from the Mariani RICO filing in the Appendix
www.InsideJob-911.com
The New Pearl Harbor, by David Ray Griffin
-Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11

Widow's Bush 911 Treason Suit Vanishes In Blink of Media Eye

2006-07-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

Widow's Bush 911 Treason SuitVanishes In Blink Of Media Eye
by W. David Kubiak

"The decision 'not to do the story'appears to be multiplying all over the nation."

Fred Powledge, ACLU

"Whoever said `no news is good news,'was badly misinformed."

Dan Rather

Think you're already amazed, alarmed or appalled enough by the state of US journalism today? Chew on this a while and think again.

Grieving New Hampshire widow who lost her man on 9/11 refuses the government's million dollar hush money payoff, studies the facts of the day for nearly two years, and comes to believe the White House "intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen" to launch a so-called "War on Terrorism" for personal and political gain.

She retains a prominent lawyer, a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, who served with distinction under both Democrats and Republicans and was once a strong candidate for the governor's seat.

The attorney files a 62-page complaint in federal district court (including 40 pages of prima facie evidence) charging that "President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft and Tenet":

1.) had adequate foreknowledge of 911 yet failed to warn the county or attempt to prevent it;

2.) have since been covering up the truth of that day;

3.) have therefore abetted the murder of plaintiff's husband and violated the Constitution and multiple laws of the United States; and

4.) are thus being sued under the Civil RICO (Racketeering, Influence, and Corrupt Organization) Act for malfeasant conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death.

The suit text goes on to document the detailed forewarnings from foreign governments and FBI agents; the unprecedented delinquency of our air defense; the inexplicable half hour dawdle of our Commander in Chief at a primary school after hearing the nation was under deadly attack; the incessant invocation of national security and executive privilege to suppress the facts; and the obstruction of all subsequent efforts to investigate the disaster. It concludes that "compelling evidence will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power, and testimony [that] Defendants failed to act and prevent 9/11 knowing the attacks would lead to?? an 'International War on Terror' which would benefit Defendants both financially and politically."

Press releases detailing these explosive allegations are sent out to 3000 journalists in the print and broadcast media, and a press conference to announce the filing is held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on November 26th (commemorating the end of the first futile year of the independent National 9/11 Commission).

Imagine the world-churning implications of these charges. Imagine the furor if just one was proved true. Imagine the courage of this bribe-shunning widow and an eminent attorney with his rep on the line. Then imagine a press conference to which nobody came.

(Well, more precisely, imagine a press conference at which only FOX News appears, tapes for 40 minutes, and never airs an inch.)

Now imagine the air time, column inches and talk show hysteria that same night devoted to the legal hassles of Michael, Kobe, and Scott Peterson, and divide that by the attention paid to our little case of mass murder, war profiteering and treason. (OK, this is really a trick question because no number divided by zero yields any answers whatsoever, which evidently in this case is the result preferred.)

When you present documented charges of official treachery behind the greatest national security disaster in modern history and the press doesn't show, doesn't listen, doesn't write - just what in fact is really being communicated? That despite all the deaths, lies, wars, and bizarre official actions that flowed from 9/11 there's actually nothing there to be investigated at all? That addressing desperate victim families' still unanswered cries for truth is not a legitimate journalistic concern? That news will now be what the corporate media say it will be, so drink your infotainment Kool-Aid and kindly shut up?

(While the 9/11 blackout is the most flagrant sign of current media dysfunction, it hardly stands alone. Where, for example, was our free and fearless press when Pentagon powerbroker Richard Perle confessed to a London audience last month that yes indeed, our war on Iraq was illegal as hell? He calmly explained that "in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing?? [it] would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone, and this would have been morally unacceptable."

(Guardian/UK, 11/20/03) And what news have we seen of the thousands of Depleted Uranium deaths and birth defects now desolating Afghanis, Iraqis and our own Gulf War troops? And whose looking into the $1.2 trillion the Pentagon admits is "missing" or the half trillion in laundered funds now propping up our banks? And how many times have you seen it reported that unbid Iraq contracts have pushed the worth of VP Cheney's 433,333 Halliburton stock options to $26 million plus? But to return to 9/11, the funny business has just begun. If you thought press performance after JFK's death was a cynical farce, you ain't seen nothing yet.)

A few years back Harold Evans of the London Sunday Times, observed that the challenge facing American newspapers "is not to stay in business -- it is to stay in journalism.'' As corporations' authoritarian, profit-driven consciousness comes to dominate both media and governance, you can expect a lot more serial celebrity scandals and even less news on the way things work or anything that really counts.

There is a clear method and message in this obscurantist madness. All this media consolidation and tightening control is strategically aligned with deregulation, privatization, social program-gutting deficits and free trade regimes. They are all convergent tactics to enforce corporations' full spectrum dominance over democratic humankind. If your progressive or conservative instincts bid you to arise against this coup, standing with our 9/11 widow is a good place to start. Her name is Ellen Mariani, her lawyer is Phillip Berg and their complaint is now online at

http://911Timeline.net/marianivsbush.htm

Read it and weep, wail, or whack out a dozen letters to the editors around your town, but for god's sake make some noise. When 9/11 bombshells fall silent in the corporate media's forest it's up to us to make them resound.

W. David Kubiak is director of Big Medicine, a research and education institute studying the corporate takeover of our country, culture and consciousness.

Source: http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=46171

I, Mark R. Elsis, wrote the 911Timeline.net and StandDown.net for historical and legal reasons. Let us get behind this Federal Lawsuit brought by Ellen Mariani, for her husband Louis Neil Mariani, and the other 3055 people who were murdered on 911.
Federal Lawsuit: Ellen Mariani (911 Widow) vs. Bush
The "Summary of Facts" will set the foundation to support Plaintiff Counts as set forth herein.

However, a complete highly researched timelines of "911" by American Citizen Mark R. Elsis ( http://www.911timeline.net/ and http://www.standdown.net/ ) who has agreed to testify to his research on behalf of Plaintiff, and believed to be one of the "most comprehensive minute by minute accounts of the events of "911".
http://911Timeline.net/marianivsbush.htm

My story: Making sense of the senseless

2006-07-22T04:43:00.000-04:00

On 9/11/2001, I along with most of the world, witnessed the worst crime ever committed in my country in my lifetime.

I awoke that morning and in the middle of going through my regular routine, switched on the Today Show. I saw the World Trade Center tower 2 in flames. A jet crashed into the building and it didn't seem as if they knew what had happened. The news came in bit by bit.

After sending my children off to school, I sat down to watch the drama unfold. As America watched, another jet slammed into WTC 1. The panic set in immediately. I was stunned, afraid for all those people, horrified at what I was seeing, dumbfounded and awed. Even now, those words seem understated. In incremental blocks, we learned that another plane went down in Pennsylvania and yet another was lost from radar. Before it was over, our Pentagon, arguably one of the most if not the most secure building on the planet had been attacked.

If all that wasn’t surreal enough, we watched the two mighty towers collapse before our eyes…after which my fear level had risen to the point of wanting to run out of my house and down the street to my children’s school as visions of imploding buildings across America flashed through my mind.

As the mother of 6 children, I have always been interested in world politics. Although I never liked what I was reading about, I always felt secure being in America, the strongest nation on earth. I felt that whatever came our way, it would be addressed and taken care of. But on 9/11, that sentiment collapsed along with those towers.

Later in the day I learned another Trade Center building collapsed. It was WTC 7. I watched the news 24/7 for days after.

The threat grew more ominous. The media told us in a surprisingly short time who was responsible for this act. On 9/14/2001, we learned the names of 18 hijackers and were told that the mastermind was Osama bin Laden.

On September 16, 2001, Osama bin Laden denied any involvement in the 9/11 hijacks. His statement was broadcast by Al Jazeera television. He said, "I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons."

Source

So although I was told that this man was the monster who perpetrated that horrible crime, here he was telling everybody he wasn’t. Sure, I thought…all criminals deny their crimes. There are more “innocent” people in jail than guilty. When president Bush was asked if he believed that bin Laden was behind the attacks he stated, "No question he is the prime suspect. No question about that."
Source

Since 9/11 the world has changed drastically and many might argue not for the better. We are headed toward a one-world government. Torture, warrantless domestic spying and heavy-handed police tactics have become policy. It seemed all too convenient for the PNAC crowd that they got their “new Pearl Harbor” which made forwarding their agenda possible. The Patriot Act was soon part of our lives and fear ruled.

In March of 2006, I was channel-surfing and learned that a CNN program called “showbiz tonight” had aired some very controversial statements from Charlie Sheen questioning the official account of what happened to us on 9/11. After the character assassination started on this man who was the star of a hit tv show at the time, it intrigued me that he came out when he had so much to lose and nothing really worthwhile to gain.

I started to research the phenomenon of 9/11 truth. I first googled Charlie Sheen and 9/11 to see what I could find and nothing came up except old news about Sheen and nothing about his 9/11 statements. I started to suspect that google was censoring these searches and a little more digging after switching to other search engines confirmed it. “What the heck is going on,” I wondered.

In my search I found information about 9/11 I hadn’t even considered. Some people were claiming that the towers and especially WTC 7 had the characteristics of controlled-demolition. I searched for videos and photographs of the collapse and was surprised to find that I didn’t remember how explosive it seemed. I started reading about eyewitness accounts from firefighters and workers from the WTC that explosions occurred before and after the planes hit. I read a story in a fire-fighter magazine that the clean-up efforts were criminally negligent in that not enough investigation was being conducted at the scene and the evidence was being removed too quickly to get a proper one.

I learned about stock trades that spiked for the airlines involved in the hijacks days before 9/11 that bet on these companies’ stocks to fall. I learned so much that it soon caused me to consider the unthinkable, entities within our own country may have known enough to have at least prevented the attacks while others may have even had a hand in them.

I’m a college student with a 3.83 GPA and when I discovered the website, Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org) I requested membership and was accepted. After accessing their private forum, I found that although there is a little dissent among these dissenters, we are basically all looking for the same thing, how to make sense out of that which doesn’t make sense.

It’s not an easy thing to come to the conclusion that we were not told everything we needed to hear.

It makes this country look like a bunch of ignorant buffoons to run off half-cocked because we’re fearful of what happened here. It’s illogical to put our defensive resources so far from home after we were attacked on our own soil. We didn’t think things through. We rushed through everything even before a proper investigation into 9/11 was conducted.

I had never been a political activist before, and I am still wary about having to go public with it, but I’ve taken those first steps by associating myself with a very eminent group of people who have chosen to study the situation as thoroughly as possible. Instead of condoning policies that take away freedoms around the world, this ethos-laden group has decided to question the event that got us to this point.

It is time for the world to lay down their weapons and talk. We cannot survive if we do not address all the problems we face as a planet which no amount of military intervention will solve. There is a reason for why the world is such a tinderbox today and 9/11 in my opinion, is key.

The changes that have occurred in my life as a result of 9/11, I consider a gift. I have been shown that my own personal problems pale in comparison to the problems that face the world. I enjoy more the love of my family and friends and although a sadness stays with me there is also optimism because there are people who recognize a need to address 9/11 in the way that it should have been right after it happened.

I haven't listed my sources for the information I've found, but if anybody so inclined who is reading this does the searching him or herself, they will find many mainstream sources to the evidence I've cited. It's not an easy journey to get to this place, but it is comforting to know that you at least care enough to open your eyes.

Previously in this post I quoted the president as saying that no question bin Laden was the mastermind, yet the FBI says there is no hard evidence linking him to 9/11 and on their website, they do not even cite 9/11 as something he's wanted for. I will provide a source for that one. Click this link.

Why We Fight

2006-07-21T19:37:00.000-04:00

Interesting video available that explains our reasons for war and how it all ties to the military industrial complex. Link to excerpts here.

Zionism, Jews and the anti-semite labels

2006-07-20T11:22:00.000-04:00

Anybody who criticizes the Israeli government is immediately labeled an anti-semite. The worst offenders seem to be the Jewish Zionists. I have friends who will criticize the government of the United States all day long yet whenever the government of Israel becomes the subject of criticism, like hipocrits they become blinded by nationalism. Never, EVER criticize Israel! That's being anti-semitic, you don't understand our people's suffering! You are a holocaust denier!(Which incidentally, isn't the only holocaust that's occurred on this planet.) We are constantly being attacked. Have you not been paying attention to the news? They kidnapped two of our soldiers! We are well within our rights to bomb the hell out of Lebanon in retaliation. Then they go into some kind of tirade about filthy arabs which actually makes them the anti-semites. Ironic, isn't it?

By definition of the word, a zionist is merely somebody who recognizes Israel's right to exist. Bill Clinton, who would die for Israel, is a zionist. Many Jewish people are not zionist. They say it isn't yet time to have a state of Israel. Most are orthodox jews who follow their faith to the letter. It's a safe bet to say that there are more non-jew zionists than Jewish ones.

Please check out this link. After I finish reading it, I'm going to get myself educated even more

Pro-Israel lobby heavily influencing US policy, academics say <--click

Join me in pursuing an education. Click here

Still think the Israeli government is innocent? Watch this

Hezbollah website hosted by a US defense subcontractor?

2006-07-20T07:57:00.000-04:00

As you can see below, I was asked to remove this post from my site. The link to the original article has also been removed. I apologize for any misunderstanding in my pursuit of an iota of truth. I would have deleted the entire post, but can't figure out how.

In defense of the conspiratorial world view

2006-07-13T10:17:00.000-04:00

July 13, 2006 at 05:46:15
In defense of the conspiratorial world view

by Jay Esbe

A lot of effort goes into "debunking" conspiracy theories, and certainly there are many which are absurd, and poorly defended. But the tendency to find conspiracies to explain events, is anything but rooted in ignorance.

One of the things which separates man from the rest of the Animal kingdom, is his intellectual capacity to recognize patterns. A human being sees a square peg and a square hole, and knows they go together. A monkey presumably has trouble unless taught.

The tendency to skepticism is not always a sign of intelligence. Sometimes, when otherwise intelligent people dismiss the connection between a square peg and a square hole, it's because they've been conditioned to ignore it. I believe this is the case with much of the self-proclaimed intellectual elite's disdain for so-called "conspiracy theories"; people have to be taught, or otherwise pressured not to see the pattern.

A person who holds a conspiratorial world view, is generally a person who demands that the world make more sense than he's told it does. They're someone looking for the laws of cause and effect, the fit between square peg and square hole, the connectable dots, to justify a narrative which makes more sense to them than something that doesn't make sense to them. Now while one may in fact be so stupid, that ordinary events are inexplicable, the events which generate conspiracy theories do not usually fall into that category; they are attempting to explain extraordinary events.

We use the concept of conspiracy every day in our legal system, and there would be many thousands more criminals walking our streets were we not to recognize and include the concept of conspiracy in trials. Yet somehow, a vastly different standard has been applied to certain historic crimes over the decades when the public demands a logical explanation for the extraordinary events in question.

Current polls now show that a majority of Americans believe the government is not telling them the truth about 9-11. That fact now makes the majority of Americans "conspiracy theorists" regarding the issue. It is now a minority of the public who believes they were told the truth by the Bush appointed 9-11 Commission, but such is not the case among the so-called "mainstream media". It is nearly universally hostile to any question of a cover-up by the government. Those who need the world to make sense do not find the disparity between public opinion and the media elite's contempt for suspicion to be meaningless. They reasonably look for a vested conflict of interest on the part of the corporate media to explain why presumably intelligent professionals go soft in the head, and they do not have to look far to find one; a media which sits in an unelected advisory capacity to the President of the United States through the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), innumerable "think tanks" funded by corporate interests all assuming a global model is "inevitable", and directly attached special interests which include the world's biggest defense contractors raking billions of dollars in for share holders as they pursue the war profits of 9-11. People who point out the obvious are not wearing tin foil hats, they're simply...pointing out the obvious.

Self-proclaimed debunkers pull out every trick in the book to discredit the now flourishing "9-11 Truth movement"; pointing out the most improbable theories as though they were representative (straw men), pointing out the unrelated UFO believers who may also believe them, all in an attempt to portray "idiocy by association" and to make a soup so thick with the stench of lunacy, that anyone who dares tread in it is sullied by association.

But governments exist as defacto conspiracies to control their peoples, it's only a question of which people need to be controlled. The government of North Korea exists to protect itself and control it's population by keeping them in the dark through continual disinformation. The governments of China, The United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, all have one thing in common; despite varying in the availability of information, they all exist as rival nations with militaries, presumably military strategies, and a requirement to keep their own people in the dark to one degree or another if their long term global military strategy has any chance of succeeding. All one needs to understand about so-called "conspiracy theories" is that the only thing in any question when dealing with a nation of significance on the world stage, is which particular theory fits the conduct. The conspiracy is a given. But the requirement of secrecy can manifest itself overtly as in the case of China, or more artfully in the case of the United States; one nation will take you out and put a bullet in your head for questioning the regime, the other will simply create a culture of derision for those who dare to ask the wrong question in the midst of plenty. It's no coincidence then, that peoples outside any particular country can more clearly see the dark side of a nation's agenda than those within it; the Chinese government's primary motive is to lie about it's own ambitions, just as the United States is. Both the Chinese and American people probably get the truth more often than not about each other respectively if the truth is damning of the other, and almost never if it's good.

Another frequent charge laid against the conspiratorial world view is that conspiracies of such magnitude take too many people to be probable or even possible. Nothing could be further from the truth; they actually take remarkably few people. I'd like to use the American space program as a good example. To the unthinking, it's simply the space program, and any given launch of the shuttle has it's purpose in nothing much further than the idea that man has an innate desire to explore. But applying the conspiratorial view point paints a far more accurate picture of reality; the space program is in fact a quest by the United States to control the space above the earth for military purposes, and any so-called civilian purposes, are only there for public relations purposes. Now NASA is a conspiracy: how many day to day people are "in on it" in the usual understanding of the term? Possibly none. No one needs to be in on it within the agency itself because the autocratic power structure of the organization and it's controlling overseers precludes -or at the very least- does not require each individual from knowing the entire mission; they only need to know their job. The planners in the Pentagon, unseen and un-elected are now free to engage the macro conspiratorial benefits of the plan, and the workers are simply people doing their job who mind their own business if they'd like to keep it. Such I believe was the case with 9-11; a veritable handful of people in an autocratic top-down human structure, decided to facilitate the event. The average New York Port Worker who thought it was suspicious that certain policies were being changed, that cameras were turned off as the WTC was "powered down" before the attacks only had the choice to believe it was perhaps curious, or to ask questions and put their job in jeopardy. This isn't complicated. Like a NASA employee, he decides it's none of his business, and of course once the crime has gone down, it's no trick to make him lay awake in fear should he talk to anyone about the "problems" he saw.

The individuals who participate in deriding so-called conspiracy theorists, are generally of two ilk; those who've been manipulated into it through what is commonly referred to as 'peer pressure', and those who's rabid nationalism is held as a higher value than any possibility that their nation just might not be the paradigm of moral virtue in a sea of evil that the evidence tells them it isn't. Some of these people may even act as conscious gate-keepers if they're individually corrupt enough as "party loyalists".

Any decent sleuth who witnesses a crime and wants to solve it however, begins with an open mind and a first question; who stood most to gain from the crime? Applying this question to September 11th generates some very immediate exclusions, first among them being the Arab world, followed by an immediate inclusion: an aging super-power which has exhausted it's previous colonizations of treasure and which has suddenly found itself uncomfortably at peace.

Public opinion outside the United States is statistically overwhelming of the view that the attacks of September 11th were an inside job. It's not that the rest of the world is worthy of being labeled "paranoid" that they should have arrived at such a consensus. They are simply not subject to the social forces and media which would prevent such a first question and conclusion.

We are currently residing in a kind of peril most Americans are unaware of. Although the rampant law breaking of George W. Bush is openly discussed, the notion that a demonstratedly criminal administration would commit every crime imaginable and lie about virtually everything with the sole exception of the one event that enables them to continue to commit the crimes, is still something which will result in rabid attacks on anyone who dares to ask the obvious question. The nationalistic intimidation campaign we've all witnessed after September 11th continues, although crippled by the exposures regarding Iraq and the so-called "intelligence failures", and 9-11 is the last taboo question remaining which can still get you fired from your job or simply ordered off a television news interview if you dare to ask. But given the magnitude of the crimes in office which have already been exposed, allowing one's self to be pressured out of asking the hard questions about September 11th almost eliminates any meaning to any other recognition by the public of all the other crimes in evidence; 9-11 is the cornerstone of every so-called justification for every illegal act commited by the administration, overt or occult, and until 9-11 is confronted with the same level of skepticism as WMD in Iraq and phony claims of "intelligence failure" have been, the American people are still residing on a fulcrum who's tipping point is in the hands of a criminal mad-man. The failure of the Democrats to face down ridicule and to demand answers on the issue has not only crippled their capacity to stop all of this, but on a day to day basis forces them to remain complicit in the insane foreign policy which naturally resulted from the biggest crime in history; there is no chance to reverse the course when the "war on terror" is assumed to be a given. But -of course- if 9-11 was what most of the world believes it was, that war is as phony as everything else manufactured by the administration and will continue unquestioned. Once lead down the daisy path, the Democrats will once again have placed themselves in the untenable position of either having to admit they were duped, or continue to play the Republican game. Guess which one has immediate undesirable political consequences. If they couldn't admit regretting their vote for the attack on Iraq on false pretenses, how in the hell are they going to admit to regretting the entire last 6 years of the "post 9-11 world"? They're not going to do it unless dragged kicking and screaming, and at the end of the day, who else are you going to vote for if they won't admit it?

It is thus that we arrive at the mother of all conspiracies; the myth of American democracy. It's never existed apart from an onslaught of propaganda which claims otherwise. It's only a feel-good story line accepted by most people because they're comfortable amid the wealth generated by it's undemocratic foreign policy. As usual, the people with the most are the people which have the most to lose by questioning the regime. There's no need for a conscious conspiracy, not when an unconscious or negligent complicity with the status quo will suffice. It will and it does.

The culture of derision against the conspiratorial world view has real consequences today. If 9/11 was in fact the inside job so much evidence indicates that it was, unless that evidence is taken seriously, we risk continuing down a path that has no basis in reality. Self-proclaimed debunkers are fond of the axiom "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". If this is true, then do not extremely serious accusations warrant extremely serious investigations? But the majority of Democrats and independent voters in this country who oppose the innumerable abuses of power undertaken by the Bush administration are in fact only hurting themselves when they fall victim to the debunker's tactics to dissuade them from further examining the evidence for government complicity. They want a new administration, but one competent to carry out the "war of terror". This is the strict equivalent of the people of NAZI Germany who opposed Hitler, wanting a new leader to deal with the Jew's burning of the Reichstag. The bottom line on 9-11 is that if you don't know the truth, everything you do based upon the lie is going to be dead wrong.

There also exists a school of thought by too many in the opposition, that although 9-11 smells bad to them, they can not successfully oppose the Republican agenda by talking about it, fearing that the right will hammer them with charges of "conspiracy whackos" if they do. And indeed they will, for those who've spoken out are excoriated by responses that the term "hysterical" is not too strong to describe. Witness one Jeremy Glick's appearance on the O'Reilly factor as exemplary of the kind of treatment one can expect if they publicly implicate the government. But as long as the opposition allows itself to be cowed by these kind of tactics, they will remain crippled; forced to acknowledge the need for a "war on terror", their representatives pressured to support an agenda the nature of which always entraps them. Like their disastrous vote to allow Bush to attack Iraq, each step down the daisy path makes any chance of political extrication for the so-called "mistake" increasingly difficult, creating a political calculus of maintained artifice vs. "I went along to get along". As to which decision is chosen, we don't have to guess.

It may well be that we are so far down this ruinous path based on our own subjection to government deception that there is no longer any possibility of escape. We've started two major wars, alienated the entire world community, and provoked nations which are actually capable of causing us great harm, all on account of an event which may well have been done to us as the pretense to empire it appears to be, by our own government. Unless the point of origin for all of this is actually seriously investigated, and suspects questioned under oath, America's fate appears to have a good chance of becoming the nightmare so many of us are all having. If 9-11 was accomplished by people inside our own government, the magnitude of this crime is going to define the quanta of desperation on the part of those responsible as these subsequent events go from bad to worse. These may well be people who've already gone so far, that they will do anything to avoid exposure, including starting a global thermonuclear war to eliminate their would be accusers.

I happen to believe that 9-11 was an inside job. That has many possible definitions, ranging from TLIHOP (they let it happen on purpose) to TMIHOP (they made it happen on purpose). I believe the attacks were actually orchestrated by government operatives in conjuction with other nations, including Pakistan. I don't believe this because I want to, I don't. No one does. I believe this because despite my natural desire to see the bad guys paraded before me immediately after the attacks, the "official story" has a counterpart narrative which is far more credible, both in respect to 9-11 itself, and the historical patterns of deception engaged in by this government over the decades. Anyone who doesn't believe that high ranking officials within the United States government do not conspire to harm the people of the United States as a pretense for military actions, is someone denying facts, not "theories". From the Tuskegee Experiment, Operation Northwoods, The Gulf of Tonkin, LSD experiments on unknowing subjects, prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor, to the overt lies about weapons of mass destruction as pretense to occupy Iraq, and so many more, the government has demonstrably acted in accordance with the charge of conspiracy. These are not "theories". So what's really appears to be a theory? The notion of the pattern continuing, or the notion of the pattern being interrupted, all evidence to the contrary aside? There does come a point at which when the record is examined, there is cause to abandon the presumption of innocence as a finding precluding further investigation. What can one really say when those who opposed any independent investigation into 9-11 and attempted to block it, then refused to testify under oath? Only a fool or someone who's had their brain washed one too many times fails to find their suspicion. But that is in fact the pitiable condition which most Americans find themselves in as they're lead ever further down the path to global Armageddon on the foundation of an official story told by those who so much evidence and history points to as perpetrators of the biggest mass murder in history.

It is not my purpose here to recount the various theories which have been set forth by those who believe the government's hand is behind September 11th. Some are more plausible than others, and some are inevitably way off the mark. It is the climate of repression, the psychology of a national condition which is being imposed which I hope to shed light on, by exposing the fundamental falsity of those who would immediately leap to defend the government against the basic charge. Those who would do so find their best defense to be an engagement in debate over the details of the most improbable theories set forth, chosen by them to distract from the bigger picture they intend to obfuscate. Their success at this is only temporary, for eventually, a generation or two down the road when the paradigm no longer requires the cover-up, their shrieking at their exposure fades, and sure enough, we find out that the cover-up alleged, was rightly alleged. The problem we currently face however is that given the global nature of this conspiracy's impact, and the lethality of the weapons being readied, we can not afford to keep our heads in the sand until a new generation uncovers the crime; there just might not be a tomorrow if the lie is not challenged today.

To deny conspiracy simply because it's conspiracy is to deny a fundamental truth about human nature; We desire, we covet. And with desire begins the quest to seek advantage for gain. Human beings conspire all the time, every day. Those who exclude people in positions of power have twice engaged in an absurdity; they've denied human nature, and they've denied it in those most capable of acting. The person willing to embrace the conspiratorial world view derives no comfort in it, on the contrary, it's very uncomfortable. The motive therefor does not exist on the side of the conspiracy theorist, but with those who dismiss him. History has not been kind to them. "Conspiracy" explains the world, it's actors and human events better than randomness and it always has. Who covets? Who stood to gain? Who stood to lose? Who attempts to excuse themselves from cross examination? These are not questions generated by well placed tin-foil hats, nor are otherwise natural suspicions which arise when they're answered. To take the conspiratorial world view is simply to engage in reason as evidence presents itself in the light of known history.

Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts

2006-07-12T08:18:00.000-04:00

Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts

by
Bill Douglas

I began researching the mainstream media coverage of the controversy regarding the attacks of 9/11/2001, when reading an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Newspaper, dated June 29th, 2006. It was titled, "Sept. 11 claim stirs UW probe -- Instructor says U.S. planned the attacks to provoke war." This led to my discovery of some wild conspiracy theorists that endanger our government and media establishments, with quite frankly insane assertions. I'll address this in full in the final paragraph.

Then by using a "google video 9/11" search, I recently viewed a FOX News interview on Hannity and Colmes with an Arab Studies teacher from the University of Wisconsin named Kevin Barrett. I had earlier seen an interview with another, a professor named James Fetzer, University of Minnesota Duluth. A few weeks earlier I had seen an interview on MSNBC Scarborough country interviewing a Mike Berger representing 911Truth.org.

Some of these guests referred to an organization called "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" with a website www.st911.org, which offered a physics research paper questioning the official explanation of the events of 9/11/2001. While visiting this site, I read that they pointed to the temperatures of the fires in the WTC buildings, and construction of the buildings, and the speed they fell, as evidence they claimed proved that what we saw on 9/11/2001 when the towers fell had to have been the result of a controlled demolition. Like the ones we've seen with Las Vegas hotels being brought down. Their claim was that the WTC buildings could not have been caused solely by the aircraft hitting the WTC buildings that day.

Then, I contacted the office of a Wisconsin State Legislator, Rep. Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater), and asked to speak to someone in the office who could speak on this issue. I asked if he was familiar with the Scholars for 9/11 Truth website, and he replied they had learned of it this week. I asked him if he and the Representative could comment on the charge that the fires on 9/11/2001 in the WTC buildings did not burn hot enough to bring down the buildings, and if he'd read the scholars organization's charge that thermate traces had been found on debris from the fallen towers (thermate indicating demolition type explosives were involved). The gentleman responded that no, they had not looked at this information, and this would not be something they would look at, further indicating that anyone who made such charges was blinded by their hatred of President Bush.

Which leads back to the interviews of guests on the three television news programs. The main theme of all three of the guests on these programs appeared to be concern of the physical evidence of 9/11/2001, mentioned above and particularly regarding the collapse of three of the World Trade Center buildings on that day.

The main themes of the interviewers on these programs appeared to be two-fold:
1) The guests were representing a fringe movement, and most Americans do not dispute the official 9/11 explanation of the 19 hijackers defeating US military and intelligence forces on 9/11/2001.

2) The guests and those they speak for, who question the official 9/11/2001 account, are of questionable sanity.

This motivated me to do some research. First I looked at the fringe movement issue that the majority of Americans disagreed with the programs guests and accept the official explanation, and secondly, the sanity and expertise of people like their guests who question the official story of 9/11/2001.

First, regarding the fringe issue, asserting that the guests questioning the events of 9/11 reflected a small minority of American opinion. I looked at the only polls I could find on these questions, and the results were surprising. A CNN viewers poll, which is not scientific, held Wednesday, November 10th, 2005, asked, "Do you believe there is a U.S. government cover-up surrounding 9/11?" 89% replied "Yes," they did believe there was a cover-up by the U.S. Government (9,441 votes), while only 12% felt there was no cover-up.

In a national Zogby poll, of May 2006, found that 45%, of the American public felt a new 9/11 investigation should be launched because "so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain that Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success." An earlier Zogby poll of New York City residents, from August of 2004, found that Half (49.3%) of New Yorkers felt that U.S. government officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." While 66% of New Yorkers called for a new probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General.

Now to the second issue the television media interviewers were most concerned with, which was the expertise and sanity of the people demanding a new 9/11 investigation, and some even suggesting possible U.S. government complicity in the attacks of 9/11/2001. Again, a simple google "video 9/11" search, provided a wealth of information.

This too yielded some surprising results.

One of the loudest advocates of the most damning charge that "members of the U.S. government actually orchestrated the events of 9/11 to fool the nation into unpopular wars", was not a tree-hugging Green Party activist, but rather a prominent Republican, in fact a Former Chief Economist under George Bush, and professor at Texas A&M, Morgan Reynolds. http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds12.html

Google research of the growing list of other 9/11 skeptics of the official story, some "convinced of U.S. government involvement," while others not going that far, but pointing out that"the official story is highly questionable and demands further investigation," yielded surprising results. Including a host of high level Republican administration officials, defense experts, intelligence experts, and respected scholars, as well as well known celebrities who are now adding the spotlight of their names to the issue of 9/11.

Among them were:

Former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force, under President Reagan, and combat fighter pilot Col. Robert Bowman (Caltech Phd in aeronautics and nuclear engineering).
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6900065571556128674

Former CIA Intelligence Advisor to Reagan and George HW Bush and founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Ray McGovern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Researchers_questioning_the_official_account_of_9/11

Kevin Ryan, former department head at UL (Underwriter Laboratories) the company which certified the steel which went into the WTCs upon their construction, and inspected it after the WTC collapses in 2001.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041112144051451

Former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Research Fellow at Stanford's Independent Institute, and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.wanttoknow.info/050908insidejob911#roberts

Canadian National Defense Minister, the Honourable Paul Hellyer
http://www.septembereleventh.org/kc/multimedia/movies/Hellyer.mov

Minister for the Environment, and Member of Parliament (United Kingdom) Michael Meacher
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8274552561914055825

National Minister of Defense (Germany). Also, served as Minister of Technology Andreas Von Bulow
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8274552561914055825

Former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, and chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union 's ministry of Defense, General Leonid Ivashov
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20060123&articleId=1788

Former MI6 British Counter Intelligence Officer, David Shayler
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5403286136814574974

Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of Scholars For 9/11 Truth, James Fetzer
http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?vid=122

Professor of Physics, Brigham Young University, and co-chair of Scholars For 9/11 Truth, Steven Jones
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion & Theology, Claremont Graduate University, and author or editor of some 30 books, including "The New Pearl Harbor" and "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions" David Ray Griffin
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6837001821567284154

Professor of mathematics, University of Western Ontario, and founder of the Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven (SPINE), A.K Dewdney
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/operation_pearl.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._K._Dewdney

Aircraft crash investigation authority, USAF Col. (Ret) George Nelson
http://www.physics911.net/georgenelson.htm

Former chief Pentagon arms negotiator for the Middle East, USAF Col. (Ret) Don de Grand-Pre
http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904degrand.html

Actor Charlie Sheen (Platoon, Wall Street, etc.)
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/280606juggernautoftruth.htm

Actor, Ed Asner
http://www.911blimp.net/videos/EdAsner-UnityIsTheKey.mov

Actor, Ed Begley, Jr
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7140359934129245752

So, now that we've examined the two main issues of concern for the television news interviewers, which was the "fringe" aspect of the questioners, and the "sanity/expertise" issue, it appears those arguments are very weak arguments, really with no merit at all.

Obviously tens of millions of Americans, according to polls, want a new investigation into 9/11/2001 and have a strong suspicion of U.S. government involvement at some level. Obviously not all of the national defense, intelligence, aeronautics, physics and engineering experts questioning the official story of 9/11 are insane or unqualified to comment.

This begs the question, in the face of such obvious facts, why do our media personalities continue to attempt to throw out accusations that are patently untrue regarding those who question the official story?

When a television news interviewer continues to ask questions and make assertions that he or she knows to be untrue, this would challenge the expertise and sanity, not of their guests, but of the television news interviewer.

The 9/11 truth movement appears to be growing rapidly, and involving people of substantial credentials and expertise. As television and some radio personalities continue to behave in what obviously is an insane behavior, what do we do? Can we get our national media any psychological help? If not, it would be wise to relieve them of their positions at least. I feel increasingly uneasy about millions of young minds being exposed night after night to comments and opinions by people who increasingly appear to be insane, yet in positions of authority.

Of course the concern here is larger. If there is any possibility or doubt about whether the events of 9/11/2001 were participated in by members of our own government, then our entire democracy and world peace would be strengthened by getting to the bottom of the true facts of this pinnacle event of our time. It would be unhealthy to leave a cloud of doubt hanging over such assertions. There should be a full fledged national debate, experts from all sides should be interviewed on national media to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Our Congress should launch investigations into the physics questions that are causing so many to doubt the official story. No matter where anyone stands on this issue, this is obviously the only path to national healing and trust.

However, this debate on national media cannot occur if the interviewers hired by national media continue to behave in an insane irrational behavior, like "conspiracy theory wing-nuts." You see, too many of our media spokespersons on television and radio adhere to a wild conspiracy theory. Their theory is that anyone who looks into the facts of the events of one of the most important issues in history is alone, and insane, but yet somehow organized in some united conspiratorial effort. Of course, the facts fly in the face of this conspiracy theory, but these media personalities appear unable to grasp reality even when it is pointed out to them.

For media reading this article, time will tell whether you are an insane conspiracy theorist or not. If you too, are among the insane in our media, the public will likely eventually demand your resignation. As one who writes sometimes on parental issues, I believe it is unhealthy to have insane people in charge of the national information highways our children are taught to watch. We need sane media people who look at facts regarding issues, not ones who launch into insane screeds of paranoia to avoid reality.

Also, you may recall that when I contacted State Representative, Stephen Nass' office, his aid stated that they were aware of but not interested in and would not look at the physics facts provided by the website Scholars for 9/11 Truth, www.st911.org. However, they did want to fire a university teacher for presenting facts, many of which were available on that site. To fire someone for presenting facts, facts that you dispute, yet have no idea what those facts are, and are unwilling to look at them to find out what they are . . . is also insane. Again, as someone who writes on parenting issues, as a concerned parent as well, America should also consider retiring our insane government officials who fire people for facts they aren't aware of and are unwilling to look at. These politicians apparently assert some wild conspiracy theory that millions of Americans are questioning the events of 9/11 because they are "Bush haters" according to the aid at Nass' office. This kind of delusional paranoia by our elected officials is of particular concern. Such wild eyed conspiratorialists should not be allowed in government.

Bill Douglas, author of "The Amateur Parent - A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe""

Get on the Bus September 11, 2006!

2006-07-11T09:27:00.000-04:00

We're attempting to get answers that aren't forthcoming from an administration that has pushed through "the patriot act," has exacerbated a terrorist threat by engaging in a so-called "war on terror," has usurped rights, lies about reasons for going to war, includes torture in our interrogation tactics, spies on it's own people without going through the proper procedures, ignores 750 laws by way of the presidential signing statement while playing the "national security" card which is a laugh when they out covert agents for political gain all the while looking to be the most incompetent, incompassionate, greedy administration that's ever occupied the office. They don't give osama much thought though they would have us believe that it was he who masterminded the heinous crimes that took place on 9/11. Now they say they won't even concentrate on him although they are still playing audiotapes that they attribute to him. Don't you see anything wrong with the picture?

Stop and think what you're trying to do as you don't exercise the rights we do retain when we are being ruled by such obvious tyranny. We need to demand impeachment of the entire administration and conduct inquiry but since their party controls congress and it's questionable that our votes even count anymore, there may be no alternative but to take it to the streets, convince as many as we can and demand action before we turn into that which they are supposedly fighting against.

They use 9/11 as a pretext for everything and ironically may have complicity in the crime. It sure did allow them to do some fairly wicked things to change the face of this nation. I don't suppose you found it obscene that the Republican National Convention was a virtual 9/11-War-on-Terror pep rally.

Join fellow concerned Americans in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2006 and help take back the Republic! Link here

jason leopold of truthout addresses the use of terrorism as an asset during an election year. Link here

Every time there's an arrest in a foiled terrorist plot, a beheading or other al Qaeda atrocity, a terrorist attack or terror alert it takes incriminating news of corrupt politicians or falling approval ratings off the air and replaces it with something we are supposed to fear. Mass manipulation by the manipulated press is obvious.

What we have to do is convince people that fear is the real enemy. Although I haven't done a lot of travelling across the globe, I assume collectively, people are mostly the same everywhere. We all have our geniuses as well as our idiots. There are well-grounded people in every group as well as those certifiably insane. There are selfish ones and saintly ones...and so on. The so-called terrorist threat is being provoked by the animosity that is being encouraged toward our Muslim brethren. It's really appalling and surprisingly simple yet people would fear more the invented threat than accept the reality of the truth which when it becomes great enough to convince the masses, will undoubtedly set the world free

Provost review clears Barrett to teach class on Islam

2006-07-10T21:49:00.000-04:00

Provost review clears Barrett to teach class on Islam
July 10, 2006

Following a thorough review, University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell today announced that lecturer Kevin Barrett will teach, as scheduled, a class titled "Islam: Religion and Culture."

Barrett's remarks regarding his theories on the events of Sept. 11 recently drew widespread attention and criticism.

As a result, Farrell, along with Gary Sandefur, dean of the College of Letters and Science, and Ellen Rafferty, chair of the department of languages and cultures of Asia, met with Barrett. They reviewed his course syllabus and reading materials and examined his past teaching evaluations.

"There is no question that Mr. Barrett holds personal opinions that many people find unconventional," Farrell says. "These views are expected to take a small, but significant, role in the class. To the extent that his views are discussed, Mr. Barrett has assured me that students will be free - and encouraged - to challenge his viewpoint."

Farrell says that Barrett told him that the semester-long course will spend a week examining current issues, including a brief discussion of various views on the war on terror. Barrett told Farrell that he plans to base the discussion on readings from authors representing a variety of viewpoints.

"I am satisfied that Mr. Barrett appreciates his responsibility as an instructor. I also believe that he will attempt to provide students with a classroom experience that respects and welcomes open dialogue on all topics," Farrell says. "And I fully expect that the vast majority of his teaching will involve aspects of Islamic culture and religion wholly unrelated to his controversial views of the events of 9/11, which we know had a profound impact on the world and many members of our campus community."

Farrell notes that a broader issue at play in the Barrett case is the UW-Madison's long tradition of protecting classroom expression and encouraging students' critical thinking by allowing analysis of even the most controversial ideas.

"We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas. That classroom interaction is central to this university's mission and to the expansion of knowledge. Silencing that exchange now would only open the door to more onerous and sweeping restrictions," he says.

"It is in cases like this - difficult cases involving unconventional ideas - that we define our principles and determine our future," Farrell adds. "Instead of restricting politically unpopular speech, we will take our cue from the bronze plaque in front of Bascom Hall that calls for the 'continual and fearless sifting and winnowing' of ideas."

UW-Madison students, Farrell says, are fully capable of analyzing new, controversial and even unwelcome ideas.

"Our students are not blank slates. They are capable of exercising good judgment, critical analysis and speaking their minds," Farrell says. "Instructors do not hand over knowledge wrapped up in neat packages. Knowledge grows from challenging ideas in a setting that encourages dialogue and disagreement. That's what builds the kind of sophisticated, critical thinking we expect from our graduates."

Campus officials also reviewed Barrett's teaching record at UW-Madison.

"Although the university does not endorse Mr. Barrett's political views or his theories regarding the events of 9/11, our review showed that he has a record of quality teaching, including as a teaching assistant in this class," Farrell says. "His plan for the course appears to offer a sound learning experience for students interested in gaining a better understanding of Islam."

Barrett has accepted a one-semester appointment as an associate lecturer, beginning on Aug. 28. This is a 50 percent appointment that has a salary of $8,247.

File last updated: March 14, 2006
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Denver Group invites the public for 9/11 truth

2006-07-10T21:30:00.000-04:00

Posted by Neil Slade:

For those interested, I will be presenting a very stimulating
presentation THIS TUESDAY JULY 11 at Denver's Mercury Cafe
Come down and say hello in person! - Neil

Be A 9/11 Brain Detective

Do We Know the Truth?

When: Tuesday, July 11th 6:00 PM
Where: The Mercury Café 2199 California St. Denver (corner
22nd Ave./Calif. )

The attacks on 9/11/01 have provided the rationale for the "War on Terror", including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, the Guantanamo Bay imprisonments, among other actions of the Bush administration. Yet, according to a Zogby poll in 2004, 49% of New York City respondents believe our government was complicit in these attacks. In addition, 66% of New Yorkers and 45% of Americans endorse a new criminal investigation.

We invite you to find out why.

Join the millions of people who are learning how to contribute to a positive world instead of being trapped in needless struggle based on misinformation.

With a special welcome to skeptics, come and learn about:

The US historical precedents to false-flag operations

The government failure to initiate routine interception of wayward planes

The Secret Service failure to protect Bush when USA under attack

That fire has never before caused any steel-framed skyscraper to collapse

That near free-fall speed of collapses seem explained by controlled demolition

That crucial evidence at the crime scene was quickly removed in violation law

That government officials were warned not to fly on 9/11/01

That there were warnings about the attacks from at least 11 countries

That an official 9/11 Commission was resisted by Bush for 411 days

That FBI agents were hindered from investigating some of the alleged hijackers

That 4-6 "hijackers" are still alive & some trained at US military bases

Our guest presenters include
Michael Anderson, artist and businessman,
Tim Boyle, manager in a software co.,
Fran Shure, business owner and psychotherapist, and

Presented by www.colorado911visibility.org and internationally recognized author Neil Slade www.BrainRadar.com

This presentation is free and open to the public. Invite your friends and family.

http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/911TruthDetective.pdf

10 Million Americans Assemble to Restore the Republic

2006-07-09T11:02:00.000-04:00

Rick Siegel is the filmmaker featured in 9/11 Eyewitness found on google video.~~Antagonist

"What’s next?" 9/11/2006 in Washington DC!

As I see the various Freedom, Liberty and Truth movements’ progress throughout my nation the one missing ingredient is the answer to the question, what can I do? Questions are raised to end the wars; prison abuse, tax abuse, wage abuse, race abuse and corporate governance and this may well be the answer.

You may have spent the hours, weeks and months in study and now you know there is a huge tumor that has eaten away our Liberty, Freedom and Constitutional guarantees. You have looked and found no law or authority for the relentless tax collections by private agents purporting to be the “government”. You have seen the horrible frauds as the governments collusion in the events surrounding the 911 hoaxes grow. Routine traffic stops, random searches, extraordinary rendition, and torture, which are repugnant to freedom, liberty and the Constitution have found permenant domicile in our nation. You know the problem is deep. Your understanding of the issues continues to grow, but there is one thing that eludes you and everyone else; what the hell can you do?

You see your local, state and federal governance has changed themselves into corporations to cloak themselves from being a representative, responsible entity and granted themselves immunity from the crimes they may perpetrate. Children are being desensitized to searches by flak jacketed masked and armed men and women, put through metal detectors and taught to enjoy this as freedom and security. You see the truth and understand. This is not right.

What the hell do we do?

I came back to NY City last Sept 11, 2005 to bring a video that I thought would change the world. Well, they marched me in front of the empty NY Times building where they stood waving banners to an empty building. Then marched across town to Rockefeller Place at a speed that one usually reserves for a foot race. They stopped for a quick picture before the police rushed them on to the UN. There we were all herded into an empty lot across the street from an empty and closed UN where more banners were waved and 30 people got to talk to each other.

Earlier in the day some of the crews were at Ground Zero, but it was more an embarrassment, as some factions were adamant to force truth down the mourning families of people who had been crushed in the buildings destruction. Others who disagreed with the rights of these protestors were threatening to remove the other group’s freedoms. When the media did notice the efforts by the 911 truth they used the incident to show the callous disregard for mourning relatives by the fringe.

All the while I ask myself why I traveled from exile 7000 miles for this?

For this latest trip to Chicago I took the step of taking what I thought to be a solution. To regain control of our organic governances and brought it into my presentation. It was well received and the only negative comment was that I would be shot. So now I would like to outline what I think we can do before it is too late.

We cannot perceive that our government is a monolithic independent functioning entity when it is a reperesentatation of the will of the people. When viewed in that reality we should, en masse, be able to take back what has been usurped. The government has distanced itself from the people through its actions and corruptions. It has put aside freedom and liberty to pursue search and seizure for the wealth produced from this subjugation.

They have committed treason fraud and murder in NY on 911 and with the help of the officials there destroyed the crime scene of 2000+ murders so no forensics or murder investigation could be had. The demolition of the three steel and concrete buildings in NY on September 11, 2001 must be a reminder of the depths that the government along with their corporate masters will go to gain power over the American people. There can be no more terrorists jealous of our freedoms since the real terrorists have removed our freedoms. Those terrorists are the corporate government overlay in DC and their funders.

Several months ago corporate president Bush told the Americans the truth to their face, “The Constitution is just a piece of paper”. Nothing he has said is truer, yet Americans have been so dumbed down they can’t remember simple history much less the simple physics in 911 Eyewitness.

Perhaps if you remember that the united states of America under the Constitution ended a few years prior to what is called the “Civil War” it would help. Congress ended the nation called the united states of America forever. The representatives went home and two new nations were formed. They each formed new governments, constitutions, coined money, had representatives and completed treaties on the international table of nations. After a couple years the Union (which were the capitalist northern industrial slave states) needed to get to the agricultural southern nations wealth so they manipulated a war and with the help of the Crown defeated the Confederate States. The Union States then installed military rule, the puppet regime (this is JUST like Iraq isn’t it?) and passed laws to subjugate that nation and make it a slave of a new nation called THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA incorporated in 1887 under a new constitution that started with the 14th Amendment. The reconstruction of this bastardization mix of the enslaved industrial north with the conquered territories in the south is hidden in romantic metaphor that deludes us into thinking that the united states of America, a Republic under the Constitution still exists.

As we go from the anniversary of the Powers demolition of the Twin Towers and destruction at the Pentagon we must take back what is ours. From Sept 11, 2006 to the Constitution day we want to call a Mass Assembly of the People to take back our Constitutional Republic. We want to call for a redress of the government and a restoration of a responsible Republic free of corporate dictums and immunities.

Meet me in Congress this September 11, 2006 and let us demand our nations return to the Constitutional Republic. End the tyranny of Democracy and corporate rule.

Rick Siegel

On anniversary of UK's 7/7 a citizen stands for truth

2006-07-08T16:45:00.000-04:00

Below is text of a private forum post made by an online acquaintance. (used with permission from the author)~~Antagonist

About 3 weeks ago (maybe less), my wife gave me an ad. from the local paper (Nottingham actually) regarding an event called "Defining Terrorism" which was to be held in the Albert Hall (Nottingham) today. I had planned to attend and also planned to try and find out a bit more about the event. I meant to see if there were other events being organised. However, my apology is, I completely forgot to do this - as I was focused on what I wanted to say at the event. I found there were 4 events in London Glasgow and Leeds - but they were all earlier this week. I wish I'd checked earlier.

So anyway...

I spent some hours the other night writing out a "deposition" (see below) to read out. After the 4 speakers (none of whom questioned the official story, I understand), I was the 2nd person to speak.

I managed to read out about 1/2 a page, before I was interrupted by Lord Carlile and then asked what definition of I was referring to. "State sponsored terrorism" I replied. I was then asked to let someone else speak, with the suggestion that my points would be returned to at the end "if there was time". I was not given another opportunity to finish. I had presumed the meeting was scheduled to run 2-4 and most other people seemed to have finished making points and Lord Carlile wrapped the meeting up at 4. I later discovered (see below) that the scheduled running time was until 4:30. However, I did present Lord Carlile with a pack of information, including an audio CD, 2 DVDs and copies of our UK petition and the ST911 press release and petition (printed out on about 80 sheets of paper) totalling 11,000 signatures.

I gave each panel member a DVD and have tracked down their e-mail addresses and mailed them the "list" below, which I was prevented from finishing.

Fortunately, even though I was cut off, the lady I sat next to spoke (immediately after I finished) - in support of what I was saying and she made a few related points. Afterwards we stayed and talked to one another for a while, so that was good, and we have exchanged contact details.

We seem to see another not-so-subtle mind game in that these forums (fora?) where set up by the Muslim Council of Great Britain

http://www.mcb.org.uk/features/features.php?ann_id=1517

I mailed them a message regarding the experience I described above. So, here for the record, let it be known that Lord Carlile was publicly presented with evidence of the 9/11 cover up and the list of questions and points raised below and that he did not allow me to read to the end of my list.

Questions for the Forum “Defining Terrorism”

7th July 2006, Nottingham Albert Hall

We have all been told that the Official Stories of both the 9/11 and 7/7 tragedies are essentially true in all the important respects. However, there are now a growing number of disparate groups who are questioning these assumptions. This is a necessary and very important process, due to

(a) the initial reluctance of the Bush Administration to set up an investigation into the events of 9/11. (They only did so following demands from victims families.)

(b) The refusal of this government to set up a public enquiry into the 7/7 bombings, even when substantial pieces of legislation have been introduced or amended on the basis of the assumed nature the 7/7 and 9/11 tragedies.

Here, I list some of the specific questions about 7/7 and 9/11 events, pertaining to hard, factual and easily verifiable evidence, which must be answered as completely and honestly as possible if a true understanding of the nature of terrorism is to be gained.

These questions are presented here for the public record and a response is not expected at this meeting, though any considered answers will be appreciated.
9/11 Questions

·Why did World Trade Centre Building 7 (WTC 7) collapse at free-fall rate, in 6.6 seconds, into its own footprint, when no plane hit it?
·Why did the WTC’s owner, Larry Silverstein, state that WTC 7 had to be “pulled” by the fire department and yet the FEMA report said “[how the fires caused the collapse] remain[s] unknown at this time”?
·Why did World Trade Centre (WTC) Buildings 1 & 2 collapse at near “free-fall” rate, with many witness reports of explosions (the sound of large explosions was also recorded, from 2 miles away, on Rick Siegel’s video camera).
·The official account of the collapses of WTC 1 & 2 describes a “Pancake collapse”, so why was a pyroclastic flow of dust seen when the buildings collapsed, rather than a “pile of pancakes”?
·Why did none of the 19 hijackers appear on the passenger lists?
·Why were the flights’ Black Boxes supposedly never recovered, though at least 1 witness says he helped the FBI find them at the WTC?
·How can the Cellphone calls have worked when this technology is only rated to work reliably up to speeds of 140 miles per hour?
·Why was the wreckage of Flight 93, which crashed into the ground in Shanksville Pennsylvania, spread over an area of 8 square miles?
·Why do the photos of the Flight 93 and the Pentagon crash sites show no LARGE pieces of wreckage?
·Why, when requested, was no clear film released of the supposed plane that hit the Pentagon?
·At The Pentagon, how were bodies from the Boeing 757 identified by DNA tests, while at the same time 60 tons of metal supposedly vaporized?
·Why did NORAD’s standard defence procedures (which were activated 67 times in the 12 months before 9/11) all fail on that single morning?

These are just some of at least 400 questions, pertaining to hard, factual evidence, which have not been answered by the 9/11 Commission Report. Additional related questions are:

· Why would Florida millionaire property developer, Jimmy Walter give away 350,000 DVDs and spend $6 million in presenting an alternative analysis to the public to answer some of the questions raised above?
· Why have a group of over 300 Scholars (myself included), stated in a press release they reject the Official Story of 9/11 as a Hoax?
· Why have the BBC failed to report the formation of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth Association, despite the News Director (Helen Boaden) acknowledging e-mail messages sent to her about this matter?
· Why have the other mainstream media organisations also not reported the group’s formation, nor its submission of a petition to the US congress (signed by 11,000 people) to ask for the release of evidence? (Copy included here).
· Why have over 500 people signed our UK Petition to the Government and Media calling for an international independent inquiry into 9/11?
· Why have Hollywood actors Charlie Sheen and Ed Asner publicly questioned the official account of 9/11 and why have the true nature of their remarks not been mentioned by the BBC or in any UK mainstream media outlet?

Questions on the 7/7 Bombings

· Why did Peter Power of Visor Consultants state that his organisation was running an exercise at the same time as the actual bombings – with simultaneous bombs going off at the exact stations where the real events occurred?
· Why did a photo published in the Daily Mail on 28th July show damage consistent with a bomb being under the train?
·Why did Mark Honigsbaum’s initial Report from Edgware Road specifically state that witnesses said there was “a massive explosion and some passengers described how the tiles… the covers on the floor of the train suddenly flew up... rose up”?
·Why did Eyewitness Bruce Lait’s account in the Cambridge Evening News state the policeman said “mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train.” Why did he say “They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag,"
·Why did Mr Blair, announce at 3pm on 7th July that the supposed attack bore “all the hallmarks of an Al Qaida attack” before any evidence had been properly gathered?
Why was the train that the Suicide Bombers are supposed to have caught from Luton cancelled on that morning?
On the single CCTV Image of the four accused suicide bombers together, why does one of the railings appear to go in front of the left arm of one of the men, when the railings are clearly behind him? Why are none of their faces easily recognisable?
·What was the reason for the changing story about what type of explosives were used?

·Why have all these critical questions, based on easily verified evidence, not been asked by any of the mainstream media?

Until these questions are addressed (rather than being ignored) - by the Government, The Police, the Intelligence services and the mainstream media - everyone should doubt that the official stories of these tragedies are accurate. Everyone should be extremely concerned by existing official statements made regarding these issues. They should also be concerned about proposed legislation which pertains to these events such as SOCA, LRR and CCA. They should ask questions and demand answers.

I hereby present the panel with this list of questions and accompanying evidence and petitions, on behalf Scholars for 9/11 Truth and over 10,000 people who have signed those petitions (here and here).

Thank you.

Andrew

Ask the Tough Questions, Folks!

Was September 11th an inside job? (Norway publication)

2006-07-05T19:29:00.000-04:00

Rough Translation provided by “Seabhcan”

Was September 11th an inside job?

From the July 1, 2006 Norwegian Le Monde Diplomatique

9/11TRUTH: More and more people in the USA are convinced that the American authorities are concealing their involvement in the September 11th tragedy. Statements from witnesses, marked confidential for several years, now show that controlled demolition may have taken place. The US government had long anticipated such an incident – as the Republican document from 2000 Rebuilding America’s defenses indicates. The 9/11Truth organisation believes that the USA probably orchestrated an incident of this type in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the curtailing of civil liberties within the US through the introduction of The Patriot Act. It has now emerged that the America’s most senior military leader in 1962 devised a plan for a premeditated attack on Americans, which would have involved shooting down a passenger plane, so that the blame could be cast on Cuba. So why should this be excluded today? Many also believe that Pakistani intelligence cooperated with the CIA and Al-Qaida because the former transferred significant sums of money to the hijacker Mohammed Atta in the days leading up to the 11th of September. They even had Bin Laden under surveillance during the time of his treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan in September 2001.

Kim Bredesen
Journalist for Le Monde diplomatique.

Most of us would think it strange if the impact of a passenger plane wasn’t sufficient to cause a skyscraper to collapse. So there were few who doubted what it was that hit the Twin Towers on the 11th of September 2001 or the identities of the perpetrators. However, in the intervening years, several individuals and groups, both in North America and in Europe, began to doubt whether this necessarily constitutes accuracy. For them, a set of contradictory circumstances surrounding the attacks do not correspond with the explanations of the American authorities and the Congress-appointed 9/11 Commission. A key reason for this doubt could be that there are witnesses and participants in September 11th who describe events that do not tally with events in the official story. An example is provided by onlookers who heard and saw what they believed to be explosions around the Twin Towers before they were struck by the planes. Policemen thought it looked like “planned implosion”. Fireman Richard Banaciski reported that: “It seemed like on television when they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.” Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory claimed:

“I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building?” – Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory

Another controversial witness statement came from maintenance worker, William Rodriguez who was working in the North Tower on the 11th of September. In an interview with New York Magazine he claimed that he first heard a huge explosion when he was in one of the sub-basements of the skyscraper and witnessed the appearance of victims, the skin burnt off their arms by fires in the lift shaft. After the explosion in the sub-basement he heard another one from above. It was a Boeing 767. Williams was the last survivor to be rescued from the World Trade Center’s Ground Zero. He was hailed as a hero and invited to visit George Bush and the White House. Later, when he attempted to publicise his story about the sub-basement explosion, it was rejected by the American authorities. He has now filed a lawsuit against these same authorities under the RICO Statute, a legal ruling originally designed to prosecute Mafia families.

Besides witness statements describing a controlled demolition of the Twin Towers with explosives, critics of the Bush administration believe there are several sets of circumstances around September 11th that give good reason to suspect the official story is incorrect. It is a fact that none of the four hijacked planes were intercepted by fighter planes. That this did not happen, combined with the fact that the majority of the air force was engaged in military exercises, has given weight to suspicion that the American air defense force gave the order to “stand down” so that the terrorist attacks could proceed unhindered. Another suspicious circumstance is that WTC 7- also known as Building 7 – a 47-storey skyscraper, collapsed without having been hit by any of the planes. Conversely, the buildings that stood adjacent are still intact.

When it comes to any forewarning of the attacks, claims that the NSA monitored fully translated conversations in the summer of 2001 – in real-time – between Mohammed Atta and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed have raised concern. In one of the conversations, Atta purportedly gave Mohammed the green light for the attacks; NSA therefore should have been forewarned.

FBI-agent Colleen Rowley claims that the FBI’s directors intentionally obstructed her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui In relation to investigation that could have led to the apprehension of the hijackers, FBI agent Colleen Rowley claims that the FBI’s directors intentionally obstructed her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui – at the time he was attending flight school in Minneapolis. They did this despite having received warnings from French intelligence. Rowley believes that, had the FBI approved the investigation, they could have uncovered Moussaoui’s plans as well as those of several other hijackers enrolled in flight schools. That Pakistani intelligence (ISI) transferred significant sums of money to Mohammed Atta in the days leading up to the 11th of September, some believe, is evidence of cooperation between the ISI, CIA and Al-Qaida.

It may also seem suspicious that George Bush has maintained that American authorities have stepped down the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the main suspect behind September 11th. General Richard Myers also stated that the war in Afghanistan was not about finding bin Laden. A former CIA agent, Gary Berntsen, has furthermore claimed that the Bush administration let bin Laden escape when he was cornered in a pocket of the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan in 2001. It is also known that American intelligence were fully aware of bin Laden’s whereabouts as early as July 2001 when he was treated for a kidney condition at an American hospital in Dubai, The United Arab Emirates. A few months later in September, he also received treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan under the surveillance of Pakistani intelligence.

THE EXISTENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES and witness accounts that contradict aspects of the official story has led some individuals and groups to search for alternative explanations for what happened on the 11th of September 2001. Consequently, a veritable jungle of theories about what really happened in the US five years ago has sprung up. The theories unfurl in a several, interconnected directions. A comparison of different opinions is presented in the book The New Pearl Harbor – Disturbing Questions about the Bush-Administration and 9/11 (2004), by David Ray Griffin, Professor of Theology and the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. A key premise he presents in the book is that the responsibility for the attacks of September 11th can, to a large extent, be attributed to former members of the Neo-Conservative think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC), who are now key players in the Bush administration. In the document Rebuilding Amercia’s defenses: strategies, forces and resources for a New American Century (2000), written by PNACs members, it is claimed that:

“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”.

The title of Griffin’s book refers to PNAC’s statement the transformation of the American military necessitated “a new Pearl Harbor”. Griffin looks at this quotation in the light of the legal principle of the profit motive, or qui bono and concludes that September 11th was precisely the catalyst the Bush administration needed. For Griffin, it is therefore probable that the US orchestrated an incident of this type in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the curtailment of civil liberties in the US through the introduction of The Patriot Act. That they have chosen to invade countries in the Middle East he regards as simply an extension of the cooperation the US already had with the power elite in Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban regime and regimes in Central Asia. And for Griffen, the agenda in the Middle East and Central Asia is quite clear: it is about controlling both the production and transportation of oil via pipes and tankers. Griffin does not point to any specific figures responsible for arranging the September 11th attacks. He states only that there are different opinions about this issue. For some, speculation about the identity of those responsible surrounds intelligence agencies like the NSA, FBI and CIA. Others believe it was the White House. A third group believe that is was individual figures like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld who were the real architects of the attacks. Alternatively, other possible combinations of perpetrators and organisations may have worked together. In his paper, “What is your ‘HOP’level?” Nicholas Levis categorises opinions on the attacks under four main headings:

a) The Official Story: That Osama bin Laden was responsible, that the planes were hijacked by 19 Muslim fundamentalists and that the White House did not receive any warning.

b) Incompetence Theory: Accepts the official history but blames the White House, FBI, CIA, NSA and others for not following up the many warnings. This was the line taken, with a great deal of cover-up and spin, in the 9/11 Commission’s report.

c) LIHOP (“Letting It Happen on Purpose”): There are a number of variations on this one. Is mainly about how factions within the American authorities and the private sector were aware of the hijackers’ plans but did nothing to stop them, since September 11th was in line with political objectives.

d) MIHOP (“Making It Happen on Purpose”): US authorities or private forces planned and carried out the attacks.

For the sceptics, the common denominator is their belief that at least one of the elements of the official presentation of September 11th is inaccurate. For those who subscribe to the radical MIHOP hypothesis, a key premise is that the Twin Towers – including Building 7 – collapsed as a result of controlled demolition with explosives; that it was an inside job. The technical/construction part of this claim has however been directly refuted in a report of approximately 10,000 pages written by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who claim that it was fuel from the passenger planes that disturbed the structure of the towers and that it was this that eventually caused them to collapse. NIST is unable to offer a satisfactory explanation as to why the third building collapsed, WTC 7, did so without having been struck by a plane. Professor of physics at Brigham Young University in Utah, Steven E. Jones, rejects NIST’s claims about the Twin Towers (see also Greig’s article). He relates, for example, how eyewitnesses had observed that steel from all three skyscrapers had melted, (in some cases, the steel was found glowing three weeks after the attack) and was twisted in a way that can only have been caused by what he describes as pre-positioned “cutter charges”. According to Jones, these charges consisted of thermate, HMX or RDX, and these are only used in explosives that are used in controlled demolitions. Another important point for Jones is that the fires in the buildings and the fuel from the passenger planes, (the maximum temperature for airplane fuel is 1000 degrees Celsius) did not produce sufficient heat to melt the steel – which would require temperatures of between 1550-1990 grader Celsius – within the 1-1½ hours it took the Twin Towers to collapse.. Jones’ claims are supported by the data engineer Jim Hoffman. After video and photo analysis of the events, Hoffman concludes that all three buildings fell almost symmetrically, at close to freefall speed and directly downwards onto their own foundations. According to Hoffman therefore, the speed of the collapse, the pulverisation of the concrete to a “milky” powder and the presence of horizontal dust clouds observed alongside WTC 7 are associates with the use of pre-positioned explosives in buildings.

MANY NO LONGER BELIEVE the official explanation, but are convinced that the Towers’ collapse was an inside job – either that the authorities “let it happen” or “made it happen”. Many who put their trust in other hypotheses, have joined forces with the umbrella organisation 9/11Truth. – an ad hoc organisation, formed to exist until the last unanswered question about September 11th has been answered. 9/11Truth has brought together a cross-section of society; members with different political allegiances manage the same organisations and lobby groups. This cooperation is mainly concentrated on meetings, demonstrations, the production of documentary films, Internet fora, online publications and conferences. In the UK, a local branch of 9/11Truth has been set up called JulySeventhTruth, so called as it seeks to piece together what happened during the terrorist attacks in London on the 7th of July 2005.

9/11Truth poses questions about why no fighter planes managed to intercept the four hijacked planes. 9/11Truth searches for the answer to whether or not the Bush administration is lying when it says they had no foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks. And as to whether intelligence agencies like the FBI, CIA and NSA deliberately failed to investigate leads and dismissed evidence that could have identified the hijackers before September 11th. 9/11Truth organised a major conference entitled “9/11 Revealing The Truth/ Reclaiming our Future” in Chicago between the 2nd and 4th of June. Every day, the media spokesman for NY9/11Truth, Les Jamieson is in southern Manhattan,where each Sunday he helps to arrange demonstrations at Ground Zero or seminars in St. Mark’s Church, made available by priest, Frank Morales. Jamieson made the following responses to questions from Le Monde Diplomatique:

– Does September 11th represent further justification to declare war?

– No. It happened before in Germany when the Reichstag was set on fire. Those responsible dressed Germans up to look like Communists and made it look as though Russians were setting fire to the German parliamentary building. The Germans did the same with Poland. They dressed prisoners to look like German soldiers and shot them. In this way, they made it look like Polish soldiers were shooting Germans – and used this as an excuse to invade Poland. And it has recently emerged that, here in the USA, the authorities planned a similarly staged operation, Operation Northwoods: A plan was devised in 1962 by the most senior-ranking military leader in the US. The plan was to arrange a terrorist attack inland, on the coast of Florida where Americans would be killed, a passenger plane shot down, a ship sunk – and all the blame would be laid on the Cubans. So this is nothing new, it’s been done before.

– How cynical can a government become?

– A lie precipitated the Vietnam War too – the events in the Tonkin Gulf. It was reported that Vietnamese torpedo boats had shot at American ships in the Tonkin Gulf. But these reports were fictitious. President Lyndon B. Johnson and foreign minister Robert McNamara exploited these reports to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in Congress – which was really a declaration of war. 50,000 Americans ended up dead, hundreds of thousands tragically affected. The herbicide Agent Orange was used to poison farms and land use. This is what happens when governments and the power elite orchestrate wars. There really is a level of evil, a loathing of humanity. That’s why Henry Kissinger said once about the war between Iraq and Iran: “I hope they kill each other,” or: “Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.”

– Is it similarly possible to suggest that there could have been a secret group connected to the government, a “state within a state,” that planned and brought about September 11th?

– Yes. One has to remember that there are private groups of agents, private armies that exist outside Congress’ field of vision. They carry out covert operations deep inside the CIA, and have severed all contact with the American government, who for their part, have no knowledge about what is going on. This has been happening since the 50’s. When Dwight Eisenhower left his presidency he said that one should be vigilant over the overarching control of the Military-Industrial Complex. To this day, we still have a shadow government, an invisible government and we believe this one works together with elements within the intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and perhaps Mossad. MI5 and the CIA definitely work together in translating the agenda for the international power elite.

– Are you not afraid of being labelled a conspiracy theorist?

– The term “Conspiracy Theory” must also be understood as a strategy of the mass media and individuals within the power elite to sew seeds of doubt about this kind of information. The fact is that, on the contrary, there are a range of examples of real conspiracies by the authorities. For example, the Iran-Contras affair was a result of a huge conspiracy that enabled the sale of narcotics to buy weapons for the Contras. And we have the BCCI scandal in 1991 – a massive banking scandal. There’s also the vote in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. If one studies these things, mammoth conspiracies can be uncovered. What about all the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq? We were told that weapons of mass destruction definitely existed and that Saddam tried to buy “yellow cake” from Nigeria. It was all lies and deception. These kinds of events need a conspiracy! The American government’s official version of what happened on September 11th is a scandalous conspiracy theory; it’s not to be believed! In our organisation we are detectives and investigators. We put together a theory and are actually extremely stringent in finding the best possible analysis.

The American government’s official version of what happened on September 11th is a scandalous conspiracy theory; it’s not to be believed!

Les Jamieson

JAMIESON IS NOT THE ONLY ONE subscribing to such theories. The participation of many community groups and service personnel connected to 9/11Truth has generated a trail of research and articles. A group called Scholars for 911Truth describes itself as ”..a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11. It was established by philosophy professor James H. Fetzer and professor of physics Steven E. Jones – the movement’s foremost expert on the collapse of the Twin Towers. The latter’s work will be published in September, a contribution to the anthology 9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (2006). In the book, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, there is input also from Ola Tunander, professor at the PRIO – the International Peace Research Institute Oslo with the article “The War on Terror and Pax Americana” (see under).

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote one of the first books published to question the official version of September 11th – The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11th, 2001 (2002). It expresses profound criticism of American foreign policy, both leading up to and subsequent to 9/11.

Paul Thompson, from Scholars for 9/11Truth, is the author of The Terror Timeline, A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 and America’s Response. This is a comprehensive collection of news articles about the terrorist attacks on the 11th of September 2001. Thompson works at the Center for Cooperative Research. Another much-talked about member of Scholars for 9/11Truth is David Ray Griffin. In addition to books on theology, religion and philosophy, he wrote The New Pearl Harbour (2004) and 9/11 Commission Omissions and Distortions (2005). In the latter, Griffin highlights 115 areas where the 9/11 Commission’s report failed to evaluate important evidence or deduced fundamentally flawed conclusions from existing evidence. Griffin is also a dynamic force behind the organisation MUJCA-net – a discussion forum for Christians, Jews, Muslims and other believers who are sceptical of the official explanation for September 11th. The head of the organisation is the intellectual, doctor and imam Faiz Khan, who works at a Jewish hospital in New York. In the essay The Paralysis of Discourse; The Incompetence of Academia, and The Need for an Accurate Diagnosis, he argues that September 11th precipitated a simplification of language and ideas about what it means to be Muslim and Arab – especially when Muslims the world over are to be held responsible for actions a small minority of terrorists have carried out. Khan believes the hijackers were most probably “fake” Muslims, i.e. that they were not Muslim in their beliefs in the way that American foreign policy is American. That the blame for the terrorist attacks is attributed to something as diffuse as a “military Islamic network,” he believes, is tantamount to an abdication of responsibility by the US, since the latter worked in tandem with the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) and Saudi-Arabia to build those networks up.

(c) Diplo

The Terrorist

2006-07-04T09:52:00.000-04:00

THE TERRORIST
by Lawrence Wright

Issue of 2006-06-19
Posted 2006-06-12

Among those quietly celebrating the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week, no doubt, were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leaders of Al Qaeda, who have watched their nominal ally wreck the standing of their organization among Muslims around the world. After Zarqawi began his bloody operations in Iraq, in 2003, support for suicide bombings—the signature of Al Qaeda since the destruction of the American embassies in East Africa, in 1998—plummeted in Islamic countries. Muslims surveyed in the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes Project reported in substantial numbers that Islamic extremism was a threat to their own countries. Jordan, Zarqawi’s homeland, seemed to be the exception. Then Zarqawi sent suicide bombers to three hotels in downtown Amman, killing sixty people, including prominent Jordanians and Palestinians, many of whom were celebrating a wedding. The next day, tens of thousands of Jordanians poured into the streets to denounce Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi was the herald of a new generation of terrorists whose roots were in street crime, not in Islamic militancy. A former thief and sex offender, he memorized the Koran while he was in prison, and began issuing fatwas and calling himself “sheikh.” “There’s certainly been a downgrading of ideological purity,” Niall Brennan, a special agent on the joint terrorism task force in the New York office of the F.B.I., told me on the morning that Zarqawi’s death was announced. “The next generation is in many respects less disciplined and doesn’t have the same respect for command and control.” Bin Laden, despite his own appetite for slaughter, disdained Zarqawi’s rough manners, prison tattoos, and unruly independence. But after the American invasion of Afghanistan Al Qaeda’s founders were immobilized, reduced to making occasional videotapes designed to rouse aspiring jihadis and berate Western leaders. Deprived of the managerial oversight of bin Laden, an international businessman, Al Qaeda began to shape itself around Zarqawi’s organizational experience, which is to say that it turned into a gang. This was a model easily replicated by would-be jihadis—as in Madrid, London, Toronto—wherever alienated young Muslims yearned for destruction.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian and the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, was always closer to Zarqawi than bin Laden was. In 2000, Al Qaeda’s Egyptian security chief, Saif al-Adl, helped Zarqawi establish a camp in Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. Young fighters from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon—the area historically called the Sham—gravitated to the camp and formed the Army of the Sham. Although Zarqawi was not yet a member of Al Qaeda, he remained under the protection of the Egyptians. According to Iraq’s former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who claims that he discovered the information in the archives of the Iraqi secret service, Zarqawi travelled to Iraq in 1999, around the same time as Zawahiri. Saddam Hussein was courting Al Qaeda at the time. Inspired, perhaps, by Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah, he may have believed that he could use terrorists to conduct his foreign policy without undermining his rule. Contrary to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion before the U.N. Security Council, in February, 2003, that Zarqawi provided the link to Al Qaeda in Iraq, bin Laden and Zawahiri spurned Saddam’s overtures.

After Saddam was overthrown, Zarqawi installed himself as the leader of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. His ability to act was an affront to the founders in hiding, who were no longer able to control their own organization. Although Al Qaeda was an exclusively Sunni association, neither bin Laden nor Zawahiri had ever authorized an attack on Shiites. One of Zarqawi’s first actions, in August, 2003, was to send his father-in-law on a suicide mission to the Imam Ali Mosque, killing nearly a hundred Muslims at prayer. Among them was Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who was expected to be a unifying force in Iraq. Zarqawi explained that his goal was to awaken the Sunnis by dragging the Shia “into the arena of sectarian war.” Ten days earlier, Zarqawi had destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, effectively driving the international-aid community out of the country. These attacks were characteristic of Zarqawi’s method, which was to target the people who could turn Iraq into a functioning society—teachers, doctors, courageous political thinkers, anyone with the skill and education to pull the country away from chaos.

Zarqawi also pioneered a new mode of communication. In contrast to bin Laden’s sonorous taped declarations on Al Jazeera, in 2004 Zarqawi beheaded a twenty-six-year-old American, Nicholas Berg, and posted the video live on the Internet. In a way, this was as shocking an image as the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda’s founders preferred bombs to butcher knives, but the number of Zarqawi’s victims mounted. “It’s estimated that Zarqawi killed six thousand people in Iraq,” Salameh Nematt, the Washington bureau chief for the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, told me. “That’s twice as many as bin Laden killed on 9/11.” Indeed, it is more than bin Laden and Zawahiri have killed in all their operations combined.

Unlike Zarqawi, bin Laden and Zawahiri continued to focus their enmity on the West and on the autocratic rulers of their own countries. “They felt the need to fight on the fringes, in Chechnya, Bosnia, Pakistan, Sudan,” Nematt said shortly before Zarqawi was killed. “Once they won on the margins, they would march to the center. Zarqawi turned the tables on them. In bin Laden’s view, Zarqawi is leading the Sunnis in Iraq to hell, and he doesn’t know what to do. Bin Laden and Zawahiri feel that, if Zarqawi forces the Americans to abandon Iraq, the Shia will go into the Sunni triangle and start ethnic cleansing.”

Zarqawi’s obsession with the Shia led Zawahiri to write a letter to him last July. “Why were there attacks on ordinary Shia?” Zawahiri demanded. “Can the mujahideen kill all the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that?” He also said that the grotesque scenes of execution should stop. “We can kill the captives by bullet,” he counselled. But in the same note he meekly asked for a hundred thousand dollars for Al Qaeda. Money—especially from Saudi Arabia—that used to go to bin Laden was now going into Zarqawi’s treasury.

In recent months, the founders had begun to distance themselves from Zarqawi. Bin Laden’s latest communiqué, in April, urged Muslims to wage jihad in Darfur, Sudan, rather than in Iraq, saying that Western involvement in the Sudanese peace process was part of the “crusades against Islam.” Soon afterward, Zawahiri congratulated Zarqawi for overseeing more than eight hundred suicide operations, claiming, “This is what has broken the back of America in Iraq.” Last week, he offered similar encouragement; still, he directed his attention to Muslims elsewhere. A few days before Zarqawi was killed, Nematt told me, “He is on the edge of declaring total rebellion against bin Laden and Zawahiri. Zarqawi’s recruits are growing exponentially. This kid is eclipsing them.”

With Zarqawi’s death, at age thirty-nine, bin Laden and Zawahiri may try to return Al Qaeda to its more disciplined and popular incarnation, but it is Zarqawi’s example that will inspire many in the new generation of jihadis. “It’s going to be like Afghanistan all over again,” Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who has interrogated dozens of Al Qaeda members, said. “The difference is that these guys are far more radical.”

Missed Opportunities-New Yorker Q & A

2006-07-04T09:23:00.000-04:00

Missed Opportunities

Issue of 2006-07-10
Posted 2006-07-03

This week in the magazine, Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.

AMY DAVIDSON: The question your article asks is whether the C.I.A. stopped an F.B.I. agent from preventing 9/11. Let’s start with the F.B.I. agent. Who was he, and why was he remarkable?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: On 9/11, Ali Soufan, an Arab-American F.B.I. agent, was one of only eight agents in the F.B.I. who spoke Arabic, and the only one in New York City. He was absolutely invaluable to the bureau because of his skills, his innate talent, and his relentless nature. At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed the chief agent in charge of investigating the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, which killed seventeen American soldiers in October of 2000.

That was an Al Qaeda attack as well?

As it turned out—Soufan’s investigation proved that it was.

What could he have done to stop Osama bin Laden from attacking the World Trade Center?

People who were involved in the planning of the Cole bombing were connected to the people who planned 9/11. There was a meeting in Malaysia in January, 2000, where at least two of the 9/11 hijackers and the mastermind behind the Cole bombing, a man named Khallad, met with other Al Qaeda operatives. After that meeting, two of the hijackers flew to the United States and settled in San Diego. The C.I.A. knew about the meeting; the agency had had it monitored by Malaysia’s secret service, Special Branch, which took surveillance photos and sent them to the C.I.A. So the agency had in its file pictures of Khallad and of people who turned out to be among the hijackers. Had the C.I.A. told Soufan what it knew about the meeting, he might have uncovered the plot.

The C.I.A. knew that Soufan had an interest in this information?

Yes. He specifically asked the C.I.A. three times for information about the Cole bombers and their meetings in Malaysia and Southeast Asia—information that the C.I.A. had and knew was relevant to his Cole investigation but did not turn over to him.

Now, assuming that it wasn’t sheer ill will on the C.I.A.’s part, why would it withhold that information?

Well, there are various theories. One is that the C.I.A. simply wanted to hang on to the information for itself. The agency was afraid of disclosing something to the F.B.I. that would then come out in a trial. Once intelligence is made public, it’s no longer useful to the agency. There are people in the F.B.I. who believed that the C.I.A. had hoped to recruit, as informers, the two Al Qaeda cell members who arrived in America in 2000. It had nobody inside the Al Qaeda organization, and here were two members of the inner circle, in America. I think the most likely answer to your question is that the problem was a mix of personality clashes and the C.I.A. being overwhelmed by the number of threats that were coming in at that time.

In the article, you mention a policy that people referred to as “the Wall.” What was that?

The Wall stemmed from a 1995 law that sought to keep from criminal investigators information that was deemed to be relevant solely to foreign intelligence. It was originally designed to prevent such information from flowing out of the intelligence division of the F.B.I. into the hands of criminal prosecutors and into trials. But the bureau misinterpreted the law and used it to force its agents to withhold information from one another—even agents who were on the same squad. So if you have a criminal agent and an intelligence agent on the same squad, investigating the same crimes, one cannot disclose to the other what he knows.

Were there reasons for that divide? For instance, there’s a different standard for wiretapping suspects with links to terrorist organizations. Was there a concern that if the F.B.I. could use intelligence information in criminal investigations this would create a loophole that would allow it to evade civil-rights protections?

That’s exactly correct. There’s a different standard, a lower one, for obtaining wiretap information on foreign intelligence, and there was a fear in the Justice Department that F.B.I. agents would be tempted to label cases as being related to foreign intelligence rather than as criminal cases because it would be far easier to gain permission to surveil suspects. So the Justice Department erected the Wall. And the arbiter of what could be “thrown over the Wall,” in the bureaucratic parlance of the bureau, was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, fisa, which was passed in 1978.

You said that the F.B.I. misinterpreted the Wall, and so did the C.I.A. Was it a good idea that was misused and misunderstood, or was the whole idea a mistake?

I think it was a terrible idea from the beginning. Criminal agents and intelligence agents have always worked together. For instance, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, there was a subsequent plot by Islamic extremists in New York to destroy the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and landmark buildings in the city, and it was intelligence wiretaps that uncovered the plan and the involvement of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The wiretaps produced evidence that was used to convict the Sheikh in court. Had it not been for the free flow of information between the two halves of the bureau, it’s inconceivable that he could ever have been put on trial.

At the same time, the Justice Department never meant the Wall to be the phenomenon that it became. It was designed so that intelligence would be carefully monitored and not arbitrarily wind up in criminal prosecutions. No one intended the Wall to become an artificial device that restricted the flow of information to agents who badly needed access to certain kinds of intelligence. I should also mention that the Wall has now come down.

How did Soufan react when he realized what had happened—when he learned that the C.I.A. had this information?

Soufan finally received the information he’d been asking for on September 12, 2001. He was given the information in a manila envelope by the chief of the C.I.A. station in Yemen. And when he received the account of the Malaysia meeting, which he had been requesting for a year and a half, and saw that the agency had known for twenty months that the agents of Al Qaeda were in America, he ran into the bathroom and retched.

We’ve heard about the warnings that went unheeded before 9/11, and the famous Presidential daily intelligence briefing with the headline “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.” Do you think that a warning from Soufan would have been received differently? Or do you think it would have been lost in what we’ve come to call the “chatter” of missed signals before 9/11?

It might have been yet another failure on the part of the bureau. There’s no question that it had other opportunities, but none was as striking as this one. These were two Al Qaeda operatives inside America more than a year and a half before 9/11. Now, it’s conceivable, as one agent told me, that we might have followed them right up to the point where they got on the plane. But because of the connection of these two hijackers, Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, to bin Laden, and because there was already an indictment of bin Laden, the bureau had the authority to do what is called a full-field investigation on these men. That means that it had the authority to wiretap, to surveil them, to clone their computer hard drives—every single thing you can imagine, it had the authority to do. It could have easily disrupted the cell, at least, if not exposed the entire 9/11 plot. It was certainly its best opportunity, one that it wasn’t given.

Zacarias Moussaoui was recently shown to have done what you say the C.I.A. did: withholding information from the F.B.I. that might have allowed it to uncover the 9/11 plot. What do you think of his prosecution, in light of your reporting on this story?

It is a mystery to me that people in the C.I.A. have not been held accountable. The office of the inspector general in the Justice Department did two internal investigations, one of the F.B.I. and one of the C.I.A. The report on the F.B.I. was declassified and released to the public, and the F.B.I. took a lot of heat for the revelations about its pre-9/11 missteps. The report on the C.I.A. has not been released to the public. I believe that the story of Ali Soufan is part of what is in that report. I’d like to see it made public, so the full story can be told.

In your article, you describe Soufan’s interrogation techniques. He engaged the suspects; he won their respect; he debated them on theological issues. In interrogations he carried out just after 9/11, these techniques worked very well; he got crucial information about the hijackers and their connections. His methods were very different from the “extreme measures” that we’ve been hearing about—waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation—and that are being justified on the grounds that they’re the only way to get this kind of information. Have we been given a false choice between abusing prisoners or letting something terrible happen?

Ali Soufan has shown that intelligent and careful interrogation can achieve real results. And it helps immensely, obviously, to have the language and cultural skills that he does. There are very few people in the American intelligence community that have his set of talents. The U.S. is known to have used these sorts of tactics you mention. The C.I.A.’s impulse has been to deliver Al Qaeda suspects to foreign intelligence agencies that could torture them and extract information the C.I.A. thought it couldn’t otherwise obtain. However, what this abuse has yielded from the top Al Qaeda lieutenants is questionable. And I think that’s because it’s untrustworthy information obtained under torture.

So the problem with torture isn’t just that it’s torture— that it compromises America ethically, morally—but that torture doesn’t always work.

It doesn’t work. It often is misleading, as in the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda lieutenant who was tortured into saying that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. That was the information that the U.S. was trying to get out of him, and he gave it to the interrogators under torture, and that became part of the rationale for the U.S. going to war with Iraq—a disastrous consequence of choosing an unethical approach to gaining information.

You mentioned that Soufan was the only Arabic-speaking F.B.I. agent in New York, and one of only eight in the country. Why was that? This is a country of immigrants—there must be a large pool of native speakers to draw on.

There is a large pool, but, unfortunately, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. are very narrow cultures. The F.B.I., especially in the hierarchy, is made up largely of Irish and Italian men. You go to the seventh floor of the F.B.I. and you feel like you’ve walked back in time. It’s like being in a Cagney movie. And it was a real failure on their part not to have expanded to incorporate more American faces.

Soufan was spotted by a legendary F.B.I. official named John O’Neill, as you’ve mentioned. You wrote about O’Neill for The New Yorker in 2002. Who was he and how does he fit into this story?

John O’Neill was the head of the counterterrorism center in the New York office of the F.B.I. It became the nexus of America’s efforts to counter Al Qaeda. O’Neill was one of the first in the bureau to recognize the danger that Al Qaeda posed. And, through the force of his amazing personality, he made New York the center of America’s efforts to stop bin Laden. Early on, he recognized the talent that Ali Soufan brought to the table, and he drafted him to the I-49 squad in New York, which was devoted largely to stopping Al Qaeda. Under O’Neill, the New York squad was able to obtain the information that led to several successful terrorism convictions.

But, on 9/11, John O’Neill was no longer with the F.B.I.

In the summer of 2001, there was a damaging leak in the New York Times that exposed the fact that John O’Neill had taken classified information out of the bureau to an F.B.I. pre-retirement conference in Florida. His briefcase was stolen. It was discovered within hours and the information had not been touched, but because of this revelation he decided to retire. And he took a job as the head of security at the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11.

This week’s story is taken from your forthcoming book, “The Looming Tower.” There’s a lot in your book, of course, that’s not in your article.

That’s true. This is just a portion of a vast saga, beginning in 1948, with the arrival of Sayyid Qutb in America, and ending shortly after 9/11. It’s a story of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists, of two cultures in collision. It’s told equally from each side. Much of it has to do with the rise of radical Islam and our failed efforts to counter it. It’s told through the lives of four individuals: Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy; Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence; and John O’Neill.

The Myth of Al Qaeda

2006-07-02T21:40:00.000-04:00

The Myth of Al Qaeda
Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s group was small and fractious. How Washington helped to build it into a global threat.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

Updated: 6:41 p.m. CT June 30, 2006

June 28, 2006 - The capture of Ibn Al-Shaykhal-Libi was said to be one of the first big breakthroughs in the war against Al Qaeda. It was also the start of the post-9/11 mythologizing of the terror group. According to the official history of the Bush administration, al-Libi (a nom de guerre meaning "the Libyan") was the most senior Al Qaeda leader captured during the war in Afghanistan after running a training camp there for Osama bin Laden. Al-Libi was sent on to Egypt, where under interrogation he was said to have given up crucial information linking Saddam Hussein to the training of Al Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare. His story was later used publicly by Secretary of State Colin Powell to justify the war in Iraq to the world.

The reality, as we have learned since—far too late, of course, to avert the war in Iraq—is that al-Libi made up that story of Iraq connections, probably because he was tortured by the Egyptians (or possibly Libyan intelligence officers who worked with them). But there's even more to this strange tale that hasn't been revealed. According to Numan bin-Uthman, a former fellow jihadi of al-Libi's who has left the movement and is based in London, al-Libi was never a member of Al Qaeda at all. Moreover, Uthman says, he's "90 percent sure" that al-Libi, who he says is dying of tuberculosis, has been released by the United States to Libya. (A CIA spokesman said he could not comment.) According to Uthman, al-Libi was a small-time member of a broader movement of jihadists who—inspired by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian killed during the CIA-backed mujahedin fight against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan—came to fight the Soviets in the 1980s and later, trained, to redirect jihad back to their home regimes. The so-called Khaldin camp that al-Libi helped run dated from this movement. "I know him personally. He's not a member of Al Qaeda," Uthman, an anti-Kaddafi political activist who is considered credible by other Libyan exiles, told NEWSWEEK by phone from London.

It seems very likely that the Khaldin camp hosted Al Qaeda figures to whom al-Libi was linked but perhaps in the loose way that Uthman describes. (Others who trained at Khaldin, like Abdurahman Khadr, a 20-year-old Canadian released from Guantánamo in 2003, have given testimony backing up Uthman's description of the camp.) Certainly al-Libi is looking less and less like the fearsome "bin Laden lieutenant" he was made out to be. And we find this sort of debunking has occurred with many Al Qaeda "lieutenants" whose gauzy reputations are reduced to pill-sized smallness once the culprits themselves fall into our hands.

Another one of these key figures was said to be Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. As NEWSWEEK first reported in “The Debate Over Torture” more than 18 months ago, the CIA's difficult interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was resisting standard questioning methods, set in motion a long train of Justice Department and White House legal memos justifying harsh treatment of terror suspects. This legal discussion ultimately contributed to the tougher interrogation standards applied at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Was all this effort at extracting information worth the blight to America's honor and reputation? Probably not when it comes to Abu Zubaydah. As former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind writes in his new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," the person whom George W. Bush characterized as a "top operative plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States" was discovered to be more of a low-level messenger man, and a slightly daft one as well. "It was like calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the COO," one CIA official said, according to Suskind.

Some U.S. officials are disputing Suskind's account. But it is true that the more we learn about Al Qaeda, the more we have to conclude that the group contained a lot more Abu Zubaydah types than it did Muhammad Attas. In contrast to the truly terrifying Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, and 9/11 master strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—both of whom took terrorism to new levels of competence—most Al Qaeda operatives look more like life's losers, the kind who in a Western culture would join street gangs or become a petty criminals but who in the jihadi world could lose themselves in a "great cause," making some sense of their pinched, useless lives. Like Richard Reid, who tried to set his shoelace on fire. Or Ahmed Ressam, who bolted in a panic from his car at the U.S. border during an alleged mission to bomb the L.A. airport. Or Iyman Faris, who comically believed he could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Or the crazed Zacarias Moussaoui, who was disowned even by bin Laden. Then you've got the hapless Lackawanna Six, and, more recently, the Toronto 17, who were thinking about pulling off an Oklahoma City-style attack with ammonium nitrate—or perhaps just beheading the prime minister—but hadn't quite gotten around to it.

Were these people potentially lethal? Yes. One doesn't have to graduate at the top of one's class to set off explosives in a satchel on a subway. Were most of them capable of hatching a minutely timed scheme to obtain and detonate a nuclear bomb in a city, or launch a biowarfare attack? No. "In an open system like a network, the bumbler level is always going to be high because of the ease of entry," says John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School. "That's how someone like [American Taliban supporter] John Walker Lindh can walk into the high councils of Al Qaeda and meet bin Laden. And recently the bumbler factor has gone up considerably." Ironically the most competent "Al Qaeda" leader in recent years, at least since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003, was Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who came close to subverting the American project and creating a sectarian war in Iraq. But he did that largely on his own, facilitated by the fortuitous conjoining of Iraq with the war on terror. Before the Iraq war Zarqawi was a nobody, hiding out in northern Iraq, largely unconnected to Saddam's regime even though Colin Powell, in his infamous Feb. 5, 2003, United Nations Security Council speech, claimed that Saddam had given Zarqawi "harbor." And he was not part of bin Laden's group. Would he have attacked U.S. interests at some point, somewhere? Almost certainly. But the Iraq invasion gave Zarqawi a chance to blossom on his own as a jihadi.

Another figure named by Powell in that U.N. speech, Abu Atiya, was said to be the Zarqawi and Al Qaeda link to terror networks in Europe. But according to a French investigation documented in Le Figaro newspaper, he turned out to be a minor figure. "If he was so important, then why was he returned to his home country, Jordan, and released at one point?" says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, who has closely tracked the fate of high-level "ghost" detainees. "He does not fit the profile of high-level Al Qaeda terrorists. Neither do any of these supposed Al Qaeda operatives that were trumped up by administration officials in 2002 and 2003. Every single one of these stories, when subjected to the harsh light of public scrutiny, has collapsed." Those of us who have been on the war-on-terror beat since 9/11 have been reluctant to write about Al Qaeda this way, although some of us have suspected for a long time the group was never all that it was cracked up to be. Especially in the immediate wake of the horrific but brilliantly coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it seemed absurdly risky—if not downright unpatriotic—to suggest that perhaps Muhammad Atta was the best bin Laden had, his Hail Mary pass, so to speak.

But there was substantial evidence showing that, up to 9/11, Al Qaeda could barely hold its act together, that it was a failing group, hounded from every country it tried to roost in (except for the equally lunatic Taliban-run Afghanistan). That it didn't represent the mainstream view even in the jihadi community, much less the rest of the Muslim world. This is the reality of the group that the Bush administration has said would engage us in a "long war" not unlike the cold war—the group that has led to the transformation of U.S. foreign policy and America's image in the world. The intelligence community generally agrees that the number of true A-list Al Qaeda operatives out there around the time of 9/11 was no more than about 1,000, perhaps as few as 500, most in and around Afghanistan. It is also fairly well established that bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were engaged in a fierce pre-9/11 struggle with their own meager band of followers over whether it was wise to take on the "far enemy"—the United States—when many jihadis really wanted to engage the "near enemy," their national regimes, like Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The ultimate tragedy of the Iraq war was not only that it diverted the U.S. from the knockout blow against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan—the deaths of bin Laden and Zawahiri would likely have persuaded most jihadis it was wiser to focus on the near enemy—but that Iraq also altered the outcome of Al Qaeda's internal debate, tipping it in bin Laden's favor. "Iraq ended that debate because it fused the near and the far enemy," as Arquilla puts it succinctly. America ventured into the lands of jihad and willingly offered itself as a target in place of the local regimes. And as a new cause that revived the flagging Al Qaeda movement. It is, no doubt, bin Laden's greatest victory.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13600653/site/newsweek/

© 2006 MSNBC.com

‘Al-Qaeda Is a U.S.-sponsored Intelligence Asset’

2006-07-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

‘Al-Qaeda Is a U.S.-sponsored Intelligence Asset’

Michel Chossudovsky, author of the international bestseller America’s War on Terrorism, personally graced the jam-packed local launch of his latest book held at the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City last June 24. During the launch, he gave a lecture about the imminent danger of a U.S.-made nuclear catastrophe amid the Bush administration’s preparations for war with Iran.

BY JOEL GARDUCE
Contributed to Bulatlat

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s War on Terrorism, made locally available by IBON Books.

An economics professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, he personally graced the jam-packed local launch of his latest book held at the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City last June 24. During the launch, he gave a lecture about the imminent danger of a U.S.-made nuclear catastrophe amid the Bush administration’s preparations for war with Iran.

Joel Garduce of Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS) caught up with the director of the Centre for Research in Globalization (CRG) during his short weekend stay in the Philippines and conducted the following interview.

JPG: How would you characterize your book’s contribution in giving a better understanding of the events surrounding 9/11?

MC: Well, there have been many books on 9/11. In fact, I would say that we had a lot of coverage of that event from many angles.

I have not centered on what had happened that particular day from the point of view of what happened to the buildings, and so on, which has been the subject of a lot of investigations.

What I have focused on is the role which the 9/11 events have played in justifying the invasion of Afghanistan almost a few weeks later after 9/11, and of course the invasion of Iraq.

And so I’ve tried to analyze the 9/11 events from geopolitics of war because essentially 9/11 is still the core event which justifies the war on terrorism. Without 9/11, there is no war pretext. That is why 9/11 is a very important landmark because it is being used extensively by the Bush administration to attempt to demonstrate that America is under attack, that these (wars on Afghanistan and Iraq) are acts of self-defense, and consequently that they must make war on the terrorists, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so I think that has been my focus, I've looked more on the geopolitics of 9/11, the role of intelligence agencies. And I’ve also centered on the fact that these terrorist cells, namely al-Qaeda, are invariably linked to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). They have been consistently supported by U.S. intelligence, and so that this whole process of fabricating an enemy, namely, al-Qaeda, is in fact also an intelligence operation.

So it begs the question: if al-Qaeda were, according to the Bush administration, to have a role in 9/11, then we would have to investigate the relationship between al-Qaeda and the U.S. intelligence apparatus. I personally believe that the evidence supports it that al-Qaeda did not play a role in 9/11 in any way. But in fact, that that in itself is a red herring. Because al-Qaeda is a U.S.-sponsored intelligence asset.

JPG: Is it accurate to say that your research points to 9/11 looking more like an inside job?

MC: Well, I haven’t made that statement. I never made a statement that it’s an inside job.

What I’ve done is to show that the official narrative or explanation which was provided regarding 9/11 can be refuted, (that this official narrative) is a lie.

What the 9/11 Commission Report has submitted is an extensive narrative of what happened that day and what happened on the planes. And the evidence suggests that that reporting is a lie. It’s fabricated.

And I can’t say unequivocally that this is an inside job but I can say unequivocally that the U.S. administration is attempting to cover up in terms of actually investigating who’s behind 9/11. And so they have to send in the picture of what happened which is to my mind totally fabricated.

JPG: Your research goes against the thesis of some thinkers like Noam Chomsky that 9/11 is principally a blowback operation. How would you look at these views?

MC: Those views are totally incorrect. The blowback assumes that the relationship between al-Qaeda and the U.S. government intelligence ceased in the wake of the Cold War. Because that’s what they say.

They say we created al-Qaeda during the Soviet-Afghan war. We trained the mujahideen, we helped them in fighting the Soviet Union. And in the wake of the Cold War, al-Qaeda has gone against us. And that’s what’s called the blowback. Blowback is when an intelligence asset goes against its sponsors.

That viewpoint I say is incorrect because in the course of the 1990s there’s ample evidence of links between al-Qaeda and the U.S. administration, during the Clinton administration as well as the Bush administration, leading up in fact to 2001. There’s evidence of active collaboration between al-Qaeda paramilitary groups in the Balkans and senior U.S. military advisers.

I think that that view is mistaken, whether it emanates from the Left or from other quarters. It is totally mistaken and it is very misleading because it really provides legitimacy to the war on terrorism. It essentially says yes, the war on terrorism is a legitimate objective of U.S. foreign policy. And either they are mistaken or they are involved in media disinformation.

~~9/11 and U.S. client states

JPG: You’ve cited the role of countries like Pakistan through its Inter-Services Intelligence agency or ISI. How would you reckon the role of other countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and even Israel in the perpetration of 9/11?

MC: Well, we’re talking about intelligence agencies. Pakistan has played a very key role historically in supporting al-Qaeda right from the beginning under the helm of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the military commander who was president of Pakistan in the early ‘80s. And it was under the auspices of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence that the training camps, the madrassahs were established.

In turn, Saudi Arabia played a role because they provided funding through Islamic charities. So there is a connection between Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda. And apparently there’s also a role played by Saudi intelligence.

Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan have certainly played a role but I think that Pakistan’s role was far more central in the institutional support provided to al-Qaeda, on behalf, always on behalf, of the (ISI’s) counterpart, the CIA.

My research has centered much more on the role of Pakistan’s ISI. Because Pakistan’s ISI also appeared to be involved in the conspiracy in the wake of 9/11, to wage the war on Afghanistan using 9/11 as the pretext.

~~Israel influence

JPG: There was a recent furor over the article by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer entitled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” that saw print in the London Review of Books last March. It’s ruffled some U.S. circles about how the Israeli government exercises much influence over the U.S. government, specifically the Bush administration where many personalities identified with the Bush ruling clique are considered neoconservatives. How would you account the influence of the right-wing circles in Israel over the Bush administration and the conduct of the U.S. war on terrorism?

MC: I think that this relationship is far more complex than that. I don’t believe that Israel overshadows U.S. foreign policy. I think that there’s in fact a coincidence as far as foreign policy perspectives are concerned.

And this is something that is not recent. It goes way back in fact to the creation of Israel.

But on the other hand, to say that Israel overshadows U.S. foreign policy is incorrect. Because I think that Israel is an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. And it is being used in this particular context in the pursuit of U.S. hegemony. Now, Israel has an agenda. So I would identify (the U.S. and Israel) as involved in a longstanding military alliance. The U.S. has extensive military aid to Israel for a long time.

But I don’t share the viewpoint that somehow Israel is now hijacking U.S. foreign policy and manipulating it. That position is simply incorrect.

However, we also have to understand another dimension of this question. The Jewish lobby in the U.S. may in fact play a role (through) their U.S.-based organizations. These are not Israeli-based organizations. And they certainly play a role in shaping U.S. foreign policy and in sustaining a pro-Israeli position. That is probably true.

But that is an entirely different mechanism to that of a foreign country actually hijacking America’s foreign policy. To the extent that American foreign policy would be different had it not been for Israel, I don’t buy that. Because U.S. foreign policy in fact is quite consistent in its stance from the Truman Doctrine which was formulated by George Keenan in the mid- to late ‘40s, and early ‘50s to the present neoconservative agenda.

The other aspect, and it’s very popular both among leftist analysts as well as the libertarian right-wing analysts is to say somehow the neoconservatives are really different from their predecessors. And they are putting forth the Democrats as a possible alternative to the neoconservatives when in fact, if you really look at what’s happening in the last ten to fifteen years, you see a continuum.

I mean, you had the First Gulf war, you had the war on Yugoslavia, you had the invasion of Afghanistan, then you had Gulf War II. And if you go back further in history, the wars in Afghanistan during the Cold War era to the present, there’s been a very consistent thread and it has been pursued both by the Republicans and the Democrats.

~~On the 9/11 truth movement

JPG: You have emerged as a leading resource speaker of what has been called the international 9/11 truth movement. Unfortunately, Filipinos are not yet familiar with that; there isn’t much of an active 9/11 truth movement locally. Could you familiarize us with this movement?

MC: I’m not a member of the 9/11 truth movement as such. I have participated in some of their activities.

I have some reservations regarding this group because it has very contradictory elements within it. And there are various internal disputes also within the group.

Moreover, I do not believe that the analysis of 9/11 should be strictly limited to looking at what happened to the buildings and so on. It’s a much broader focus which is required. It’s the use of massive casualty-producing events to justify war.

And so we are simply not looking at 9/11. We’re looking at 9/11, we’re looking at the London bombings, we’re looking at the Madrid bombings, we’re looking at the Bali bombings, and so on.

We’re also looking at the various suicide attacks which have taken place in the Iraqi war theater. And we know that many of those suicide attacks in fact were instigated by the occupation forces.

So I think it’s also important at least from my perspective to broaden this understanding of 9/11. And the 9/11 truth movement has done lots of good work. They tend to be much more specialized in focusing on Building 7 and the World Trade Center, and what happened to the planes going into the Pentagon, whether it was a plane or a missile. And all those things I think are very important. I’ve been following that literature very carefully.

I have not been involved in the direct investigation into that particular aspect of 9/11. I have done one piece of analysis which maybe is a bit in line with that literature, recently. It’s the issue of what happened on the planes. And I have a chapter in my book which focuses on that because it just struck me that there was a very important relationship which has not been well-analyzed, that none of those cellphone conversations could have taken place from cellphones at altitudes above 8,000 feet. And so I wanted to review that narrative in the 9/11 Commission Report. And identify very concretely that it is simply fabricated. It is impossible to make a telephone call from high altitude onboard a plane. And most of their descriptions rest on that. Not all of it, but most of it rests on telephone conversations between alleged passengers on one hand and family members on the other. And the industry is absolutely unequivocal on that. They say that you could not make a telephone conversation at 31,000 feet. You might be able to do it at 8,000 feet but the planes were flying at high altitude during the good part of the time when they were in the air.

~~The U.S. and fascism

JPG: How do you view claims that the U.S. government especially under the Bush administration has become a full-fledged fascist empire a la Nazi Germany?

MC: There’s certainly evidence to suggest that the Bush administration is moving towards a police state. There’s repeal of the rule of law because people can be arrested arbitrarily.

There’s a military agenda to conquer foreign lands, and the pretext is fabricated. So, yes, there are certain features reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

But on the other hand one has to be very careful in making those comparisons.

Because one of the features of Nazi Germany was that Nazism was also a means for creating employment in the military-industrial complex, so that they were building up their military and they had expanded defense expenditures, infrastructures, so on, which created a lot of jobs in the course of the 1930s. And what characterizes the present regime in America is yes, movement towards martial law and the police state, militarization of civilian institutions, and also big contracts for the military and lots of military spending. (However) the type of weapons systems which currently prevails is such that these hardly create any jobs.

And so we’re today in a neoliberal context. Nazi Germany was not characterized by neoliberal reforms. And that was one of the reasons why there was more support for the Nazi programme in the middle to late ‘30s. Because there was a promise of jobs which ultimately was reached in the late ‘30s when the German military machine was in full swing.

~~Rifts in the U.S. establishment

JPG: There had been revelations in U.S. media that point to the Pentagon under Rumsfeld getting more control over the covert operations than the CIA. and the U.S. State Department. How do you regard these revelations? Do they indicate anything of value in terms of the changes being undergone by the U.S. state?

MC: There’s always sort of a rivalry between competing agencies of the U.S. government. I think that the Pentagon has been vying for some time to implement its own intelligence operations. In this particular case, they implement disinformation campaigns which consisted of planting news stories in the media. So yes, they are involved in intelligence.

But on the other hand, I don’t view this necessarily as a crucial issue. It’s a rivalry between bodies of the state apparatus. There can be very significant discrepancies.

Look at the person now who’s in charge of intelligence. It’s John Negroponte, who was involved in the dirty war in Central America, particularly in promoting the para-military death squads in Honduras and also his role in Nicaragua.

I think in effect that these organizations are rivals but they also collaborate well. They always have joint committees, the Pentagon, the CIA., the NSA., and so on. I really don’t think that any change in direction would occur as a result of these discrepancies. They’re normal within governmental structure.

JPG: There have been a string of prominent Americans coming out against the Bush administration and its handling of the war in Iraq, of the U.S. war on terror. They include active and retired generals, some previous Cabinet secretaries and even some current members of the U.S. Congress. There seems to be emerging rifts within the U.S. ruling class. What do you think are the prospects of the anti-imperialist movement being able to make use of these rifts within the U.S. ruling class?

MC: I think there are people in the U.S., both Republicans and Democrats, who recognize that the course adopted by the Bush administration, particularly in Iraq, but also in relation to Iran, is going to lead essentially to a complete fiasco.

And it’s not that they are against U.S. foreign policy as decided by the Bush administration, but they believe that it should be conducted differently, perhaps with a less militarist perspective.

So you have people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was a firm believer in the idea that America should extend its interests into Central Asia, for instance, and gain control over the Eurasian corridor, and the oil reserves of that region, but would probably favor a somewhat more negotiated policy, rather than all-out military conquest and war and so on and so forth.

So people like that are now more or less presenting (themselves as) voices of moderation. But it doesn’t mean necessarily that they are in disagreement with the broader objectives of U.S. imperialism, which is really to colonize regions.

I see dissent from within the establishment but I don’t see necessarily more articulate dissent against the project of global domination and militarization which the Bush administration has been putting forth.

JPG: So these emerging rifts within the U.S. ruling elite do not really indicate a departure from the imperial project that the U.S. has been conducting?

MC: I think that these differences in the current context could still play a very important role. It’s not to say that things don’t change.

What I’m saying is that these differences of viewpoint is not some kind of big revolution in U.S. politics. It’s simply the fact that within the ruling elite, people think the Bush administration has taken on a course which is untenable and which ultimately will lead to disaster, and is not furthering the U.S. corporate agenda in a most effective way.

So these moderating views do not mean that the U.S. all of a sudden has become a peaceful nation. It simply means that they want to give a slightly more humane face to imperialism. That’s really the whole issue.

There’s a global military agenda, there’s a plan to conquer, the plan to dominate and impoverish. And that some people in America think that there are better ways of doing it. That’s the way I see this critique. Because the people who were undertaking that critique are themselves the architects of this military agenda, including Brzezinski.

And the Democrats don’t really have an alternative viewpoint to that of the Republicans. They probably would be a little bit less radical in pushing certain policies but I don’t think that fundamentally they would do things that different.

You must remember that there are certain institutions which will be there all the time—the CIA, the Pentagon, and so on – irrespective of the team of people who are in power. And ultimately, to what extent do these people call the shots in consultation, let’s say, with Lockheed Martin, the defense contractors, and the oil companies?

JPG: But what if it’s possible that the war crimes committed by the Bush administration and those in the U.S. ruling elite are held to account? Don’t you think the people’s movement in the U.S. and the antiwar movement worldwide can benefit from holding to account the Bush administration and even the Democrats who approved of this war on terrorism?

MC: I think that at one level, there’s certainly an opportunity to push forward in terms of let’s say the people’s movement in the U.S. as a result of the faults of the Bush administration, let’s say with regard to Iraq, with regard to the torture.

But we must not fall into the trap of thinking that if Bush is impeached or if there’s change in direction leading let’s say to a new president who is a Democrat, that there will be fundamental change in America.

You see, the U.S. is also involved in what we call regime rotation. A regime rotation in America doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s going to be real and meaningful changes in the way in which the country is moving nationally and internationally.

And that’s where the confusion emerges, because there’s a movement in the U.S. that says anything else but Bush. And they say yes, we must get rid of Bush.

Now that assumes first of all that Bush is actually making the decisions. He’s not. He himself is a puppet. He has limited understanding of U.S. foreign policy and acting on behalf of other interests.

Clearly yes, the advisory team is important but I would say we have to look at the role of U.S. intelligence, the military, the links between the military intelligence establishment and the oil companies and the defense contractors, and so on. And of course Wall Street which ultimately is really the basic pinnacle of financial power in America.

And so having come to the understanding that somehow if Bush is impeached or whether there’s a change in regime that there’s going to be fundamental change, I think is an illusion.

On the contrary, it might mean that it might demobilize people who would otherwise be more aware of the fact that you don’t change a New World Order by simply changing a president. You need much more carefully thought out ways of waging the struggle. You have to target the defense contractors, the oil companies, the insidious role in pushing a military agenda, not to mention 9/11, the use of 9/11 as a pretext.

That’s the way I see it. I’m not particularly impressed by that perspective that ultimately once you get rid of Bush you solve the problem. But I should say that an impeachment of Bush would be a very important achievement.

It’s ironic to say the least that there was an impeachment move against Clinton for his involvement with Monica Lewinsky but when extensive war crimes are revealed and when the U.S. president blatantly violates all the domestic and international norms of justice, and engages upon a criminal war with no justification whatsoever, that more or less he could continue exactly the way he wants, I think there we have a problem.

So yes the impeachment of President Bush is something that I would support. But I don’t believe necessarily that it will resolve matters in the longer run, in the longer term.

JPG: Given the unprecedented belligerence of the U.S. under the aegis of the war on terror, what are the prospects of a schism developing within the imperialist camp similar to what developed during World War II where there were Allied Powers vis-à-vis the Axis Powers?

MC: You mean, between the U.S. and UK on one hand, and France, Germany on the other?

JPG: Or say, Russia and China?

MC: Well, certainly, I wouldn’t say that China and Russia are part of that imperialist design. They’re not countries which have imperial agenda as such. I’m not saying necessarily that they couldn’t in the future. But historically the Soviet Union didn’t really have an imperial agenda. And China has never had an imperial agenda. In its history, it’s always remained within its borders.

I think what we’re looking at is the relationship which exists within the Western military alliance. That is really the crucial thing. And the fact that you have very significant divisions between U.S., Britain, on one hand, and France and Germany on the other. I think that’s very important.

And you have splits in the defense industry, the military-industrial complex. Britain is integrated into the United States. The British aerospace systems is actually producing for the U.S. Department of Defense as exactly the same privileges as the U.S. defense contractors. And it was an agreement that was signed in 1999.

And then you have the European defense industry which is really Franco-German. And so you have a split or divisions between what I call the Anglo-American alliance where you can add Australia, Canada, perhaps also Israel, and maybe a few other countries, who are part of this agenda. And then you have the Franco-German alliance.

But I should also mention that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is still an organization so firmly under U.S. control. And that’s why you see the fact that now with the buildup of the possible war with Iran, what’s happening is that you have also tacit support expressed by President Jacques Chirac of France. And so you don’t have a situation in any way comparable to that prior to the war on Iraq. Bulatlat

© 2006 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited

New York Times and neocons bury 9/11 truth movement

2006-07-01T05:35:00.000-04:00

Viewpoint: New York Times and neocons bury 9/11 truth movement

By Joe Baker, Senior Editor

“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”—Arthur Schopenhauer

The truth of the above statement was demonstrated by a recent article in The New York Times that attempted to dismantle the followers of a group known as 911truth.org.

With the 9/11 truth movement, it was a case of walking into a carefully planned and skillfully executed trap. The Times article branded the movement as a group of “conspiracy buffs” and proceeded to ridicule and trash their beliefs. The attack was predicated on a report of a two-day conference in Los Angeles sponsored by the 9/11 movement.

One of the leading 9/11 researchers, publisher Mike Ruppert, who is not a member of the group, said of the Times’ article’s effect: “...the 9/11 truth movement has been virtually consigned to a footnote in the dustbin of history as a result of mainstream media mind control and its own foolish choices.”

Ruppert said the movement failed to consider two key points: when the major media must take note of a story they have failed to report, they try to discredit independent efforts, and independents must avoid the obvious points of ambush.

It is evident now that the only movements challenging the government line and revealing the complicity of the press that will get publicity are those easily discredited in the public eye.

The Times article was a hatchet job that carried a heavy spin and tried to portray the movement as a bunch of kooks. “In colleges and chat rooms on the Internet,” it said, “this band of disbelievers has been trying for years to prove that 9/11 was an inside job.”

The article does not mention the three top-selling books about the 2001 attacks: The New Pearl Harbor, Crossing the Rubicon, Ruppert’s own book, and The Terror Timeline. The assertions and evidence of these books have not been challenged nor disproved.

The Times piece declared of the 9/11 movement: “a group that, in its rank and file, includes professors, chain-saw operators, mothers, engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza deliverymen, college students, a former fringe candidate for the United States Senate and a long-haired fellow named hummux (pronounced who-mook) who, on and off, lived in a cave for 15 years.” Yep, just a lot of wackos.

Sneering at the physical evidence-centered “red flags,” The Times said they “were the meat and potatoes of the keynote speech on Friday night by Alex Jones, who is the William Jennings Bryan of the 9/11 band.”

Alex Jones is a syndicated talk-radio host and documentary film-maker from Austin, Texas. His show airs locally on WLUV-1520, daily, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Listen to him yourself, and see what you think.

What The Times did was to pick someone whom they considered an easily dismissed “leader” of the movement, wrap him up with the screwballs and flush the lot. The real pioneer researchers, such as Michel Chossudovsky, Paul Thompson, Nafeez Ahmed, Dan Hopsicker and Ruppert were never mentioned because they aren’t easily refuted.

In another spin shot, the newspaper declared: “The controlled demolition theory (that explosive charges brought down the WTC towers) is the sine qua non of the 9/11 movement. Its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the 10,000-page investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers’ structure, which eventually collapsed.”

Ruppert retorts: “The sine qua non of 9/11 research—as far as we’re concerned—is the original investigation and exposé that five simultaneous wargame exercises based on hijacked airliners were taking place on the morning of 9-11-01 in the Northeast Air Defense Sector and that these exercises—under the control of Dick Cheney—were what paralyzed air defenses that day. This is the one piece of hard evidence which cannot (and has not) been refuted or even acknowledged by the government.” That statement rests on a thoroughly probed base of means, motive and opportunity.

In addition, anyone with any common sense still asks, “Why did the 47-story building WTC 7 next to the twin towers—which housed the FBI, CIA, SEC, ATF, EEOC, among other agencies—collapse in exactly the same demolition-like-manner when it was never hit by any airplane?”

Then consider a new book by Ron Suskind, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and a 1995 Pulitzer Prize winner, The One Percent Doctrine, which relates a panicky CIA officer telling President George W. Bush in the summer of 2001 a huge attack on the U.S. was imminent; to which Bush replied, “O.K. You’ve covered your @#%$.”

Suskind’s book also shows Cheney as the real power in this administration, and reveals the CIA nickname for Cheney, “Edgar,” as in Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, with his dummy, Charlie McCarthy.

The One Percent Doctrine denotes Cheney’s “default strategy” based on immediate reaction to any perceived threat rather than full analysis, as a result of 9/11. Suskind also shows how much information does not get past Cheney to Bush. Maybe that’s why all those domestic and foreign intelligence warnings about 9/11 were ignored, or were they in the design of “plausible deniability”? Suskind depicts Cheney in control of U.S. foreign policy, and more.

One other instance of where the 9/11 movement stepped into the government’s trap was their acceptance of the claim that no jetliner struck the Pentagon that day. Most of the movement’s members bought that theory, which apparently was crafted by the CIA. Then, this month, the government released a video showing an airliner striking the Pentagon.

The released footage does not clearly show an airliner striking the Pentagon, as the footage from the surveillance camera is too rudimentary to distinguish WHAT hit the Pentagon—only that “something” hit it.

That just gave more credence to The Times’ claim that “...the 9/11 Truthers are dogged, at home and in the office, by friends and family who suspect that they may, in fact, be completely nuts.”

Besides Suskind’s book, which was favorably reviewed in The New York Times, by the way, and featured on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, don’t expect to hear too much national discussion of the questions surrounding 9/11—whether answered or not—any time soon.

Editor & Publisher Frank Schier contributed to this editorial.

From the June 28-July 4, 2006, issue

Copyright 2002-2006 - The Rock River Times

(published in Rockford, IL)

Victims' Families Say Gov't Secrecy Keeping 9/11 Truth Hidden

2006-07-01T00:39:00.000-04:00

Victims' Families Say Gov't Secrecy Keeping 9/11 Truth Hidden
Thursday , June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — Families of those killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 said Thursday that excessive secrecy by the government is keeping from them what went wrong before the hijackings.

"All we want is the truth," said Michael Low of Batesville, Ark., whose daughter Sara was a flight attendant on one of the airplanes that flew into the World Trade Center. "We believe in freedom and open government, but at times it seems like we're getting the old Soviet Union."

A handful of family members held a news conference in the Capitol to push for a law that would unlock secrets kept by the Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA was given broad authority to protect sensitive security information — known as SSI — when it took over transportation security after the attacks.

The families are especially angry that the TSA refuses to give them information that was given to the lawyers for convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, including about 150,000 FBI interviews of witnesses and several thousand CDs.

During Moussaoui's trial, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema twice ordered the government to turn over the information to the families.

"It's quite extraordinary that TSA has a tougher policy on disclosure than the CIA or the FBI or the NSA (National Security Agency)," Brinkema said.

TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said the agency is cooperating. It just gave the families' lawyers the operations guide for security checkpoints, and they were about to get the aircraft standard security program, she said. Both date to before the attacks.

"TSA has always been sensitive to the Sept. 11 families' issues," Clark said. "But we've determined that the public and transportation security as a whole are best served by limited access to information."

Information that needs to be kept secret, she said, includes:

— How TSA selects airline passengers for random screening.

— The vulnerability of important tunnels to terrorist attack.

— How bomb-detection machinery works and how it can be contaminated.

"We hold close those things that need to be kept close," Clark said.

Some of the families are hoping to get information about security standards before Sept. 11 because they are bringing a negligence suit against American and United airlines, which operated the hijacked airlines. Others just want more oversight of the TSA.

"Without accountability we are going to revisit another 9/11 sooner than we think," said Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died on Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Democratic Rep. Martin Sabo of Minnesota said TSA's unique secretiveness makes it hard for Congress to oversee the agency.

"It's been a constant problem," Sabo said. "There was no process within TSA. Virtually anyone could classify."

Sabo and Republican Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky persuaded the House to adopt a requirement that the Homeland Security Department, of which TSA is part, release all security information that's more than three years old, if it's not part of an existing security plan.

The Sabo-Rogers measure would also require the TSA to turn over documents requested by a judge in a legal proceeding unless the agency can demonstrate why it shouldn't.

The Sept. 11 families, during their news conference, urged the Senate to approve the requirements for more openness from the TSA.

Clark said the Senate shouldn't agree to require the TSA to turn over documents if a judge requests them.

"They might as well write a provision that says there is no longer sensitive security information," she said. Government wouldn't be able to keep any secrets, she said, because they could all be related to litigation.

Clark also said the TSA has improved its system for designating information "sensitive."

"It's a completely different office than it was one year ago," she said. "It's not the first thing you do when you're trying to keep another 9/11 from happening."

Activists Protest Guantanamo and 9/11 Report

2006-06-30T03:57:00.000-04:00

Activists Protest Guantanamo and 9/11 Report
VT 9/11 TRUTH GROUP (06.28.06)

BURLINGTON — Last Sunday afternoon, a perfect 80-degree day brought crowds to the Church Street Marketplace in search, perhaps, of sun, sustenance and sales. Some of those shoppers and cafe people-watchers were treated to an unexpected, confrontational bit of street theater. Nine men wearing black hoods and orange jumpsuits, meant to represent Guantanamo Bay prison detainees, made their way down Church Street, hands held — though not cuffed — behind them. Two in front carried an upside-down American flag; two at the rear carried a large white sign with the message: "Arrest the U.S. government — 9/11 was a U.S. military attack." These strong words met with derision and anger from some; others applauded. "Only in Burlington . . .," opined one onlooker.

The group stopped in each block for a protest/performance: The "prisoners" kneeled on the ground with heads bowed. An accompanying "narrator," wearing a striped shirt and cargo shorts, read brief biographical statements on their behalf, standing next to each in turn. "My name is Jamil al-Banna," the narrator declaimed. "I have been imprisoned for 4 1/2 years without being charged with a crime. I have not been allowed legal counsel. I have three sons ages 6, 8 and 9. My oldest prays every day that I am not being tortured . . ." At the end of each bio, the narrator shouted, "Only 9/11 truth can set me free."

The participants this street-theater protest are members of the Vermont 9/11 Truth Group. According to them, the human-rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons, secret "extraordinary renditions" (i.e., torture outsourcing), the U.S. Patriot Act and the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan all stem from the events of September 11, 2001. A volunteer manned a table set up on the Marketplace block between Bank and College streets offering books, pamphlets, buttons and other resources that question the identity of the perpetrator of those terrorist acts.

At an organizational meeting prior to their demonstration, Shelburne resident Pete Garritano, 50, explained that he and other members of the local Truth Group don't know whether any of the controversial 9/11 conspiracy theories are true, but they are certain the official 9/11 Commission Report doesn't add up.

Garritano pointed out that the Bush administration delayed the start of an investigation for 441 days after the attacks, and then created a commission composed of Bush loyalists. Burlington Truth Group member Frank Haddleton, 43, said their immediate goal is a city council resolution calling for a new 9/11 investigation. Thirty-seven-year-old Greg Nixon, also of Burlington, put it this way: "The burden of proof is on the government to tell us what really happened."

"We believe that the more people actually take the time to examine the facts," added Garritano, "the more people will realize that the government's story is like Swiss cheese."

The Vermont 9/11 Truth Group is not alone in its skepticism. There are corollary activists in New York, Chicago, Boston and many other cities. There is a British 9/11 Truth Group, and even a Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth. According to Garritano, these are not chapters of a national organization; rather, they are all grassroots groups that have cropped up independently and now exchange ideas and information — see www.vt911.org for links. Nixon explained that the Vermont group launched after David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, came to speak at Burlington's Unitarian Church last fall. His book was one of the offerings at the information table during Sunday's demonstration.

Garritano believes the Guantanamo protest had, and will continue to have, an impact because of growing public awareness that the prison is a "horrible thing," he said. He further suggested that an increasing number of Americans are tired of the Bush administration using 9/11 to trump opposition to its policies and actions. "We all don't think this is what our country is supposed to be about," Garritano declared. "For many people it is a sensitive subject, but we feel that it is 'our duty as Americans to be vigilant to protect our liberty,' as Thomas Jefferson once said."

Muslim, Jewish, Christian Alliance For 9/11 Truth

2006-06-28T12:13:00.000-04:00

Not sure if I have ever posted this website before.<--click link The following is a letter sent by the founder of mujca.com in response to an op-ed that was printed in the Washington Post. <--click link

emailed to rperle@aei.org
June 26th, 2006

Dear Richard Perle,

I understand that you encourage your friends to call you by your nickname "the Prince of Darkness." After reading your Washington Post op-ed railing at Bush and Condi for beating an "ignominious retreat" by "blinking on Iran" I am wondering why. You seem like such a sweet, innocent guy! How could a nice man like yourself, who is only concerned with "the struggle for freedom in Iran" and "support for democracy and human rights in Iran" revel in such a Satanic sobriquet?

My dear "Prince," I am writing to warn you that by dubbing yourself “The Prince of Darkness" you are encouraging your enemies to spread terrible rumors about you. For example, on WORT radio here in Madison, Wisconsin, Ashcroft-gagged FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds recently confirmed what she had already indirectly conveyed through an article in Vanity Fair: She says she saw FBI intercepts showing that you and Douglas Feith had arranged the financing for 9/11!

O poor defamed and denigrated Prince, it is my sad duty to inform you that Ms. Edmonds is not the only one who is saying such things. Vile rumor-mongers are claiming that the American Turkish Council (ATC) and American-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (AACC), upon whose boards you and Mr. Feith so innocently sit, are fronts for drug-smuggling, money-laundering, and false-flag terrorism, and prime sponsors of the 9/11 crimes against humanity. These same back-stabbers and chatterers are claiming that Valerie Plame was outed to stop her surveillance of the ATC, which some wags have been calling the American Terrorism Council. These slanderous, conspiracy-crazed moonbats are raising the alarm that ATC and AATC, major players in the nuclear black market, may launch another 9/11-style false-flag terror event to trigger a US attack on Iran. By calling yourself "the Prince of Darkness," you only encourage such speculation.

O purehearted princely master of Machievellian mendacity, these horrific vilifications and disparagements of your royal honor will undoubtedly continue as long as you go around calling yourself "the Prince of Darkness." If you want to avoid the hangman's noose, and continue your idealistic volunteer work for freedom and democracy, I urge you to publicly repudiate your nickname "the Prince of Darkness" and make it clear that henceforth you will be addressed as "the Prince of Sweetness and Light." That way, when you write editorials urging Americans to risk World War III by turning Iran into an irradiated charnel house, people will believe that you are motivated by a saintly, unsullied love of freedom, democracy, and the Good.

Your humble & unworthy servant,

Kevin Barrett Coordinator,
Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth

Senate Holds Hearings on Bush's Use of Signing Statements

2006-06-28T04:13:00.000-04:00

June 27, 2006
Senate Holds Hearings on Bush's Use of Signing Statements
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:06 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's frequent use of special statements that claim authority to limit the effects of bills he signs, saying the statements help him uphold the Constitution and defend national security.

Senators weren't so sure.

''It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution,'' said Arlen Specter, a Republican whose Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the issue. ''There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview.''

At the White House, Press Secretary Tony Snow said, ''There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions.''

The bill-signing statements say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds. Some 110 statements have challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Snow said presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton have issued such statements.

''The president has done the same thing that his predecessors have,'' he told reporters. ''Presidents generally had the same concerns about defending the presidential prerogatives when it comes to national security.''

In addition to Specter's objections, Democrats called the signing statements an example of the administration trying to expand executive power.

''I believe that this new use of signing statements is a means to undermine and weaken the law,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. ''If the president is going to have the power to nullify all or part of a statute, it should only be through veto authority that the president has authorized and can reject -- rather than through a unilateral action taken outside the structures of our democracy.''

Defending Bush, a Justice Department lawyer said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had made it prudent for the president to protect his powers with signing statements more than did his predecessors.

''Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events,'' said lawyer Michelle Boardman. ''The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11.''

''Congress has been more active, the president has been more active,'' she added. ''The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute.''

The exchange came during a midterm election year in which Specter, some fellow Republicans and many Democrats are highlighting concerns about the administration's use of executive power. Specter's personal list includes Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, the administration's checking of phone records and the sending of officials to hearings but saying they cannot answer lawmakers' questions on national security grounds.

The session also was aimed at countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

''The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is,'' he said. ''I don't know why the issue of presidents issuing signing statements is controversial at all.''

Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is trying an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto, which could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

''The president is not required to,'' Boardman said.

''Of course he's not if he signs the bill,'' Specter snapped back.

Other presidents have used signing statements for administrative reasons, such as instructing an agency how to put a certain law into effect. They usually are inserted quietly into the federal record.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

An Open Letter to the 9/11 Commission

2006-06-26T22:38:00.000-04:00

Contact: Ed Haas - office (843) 278-5021 mobile (843) 327-7598
efhaas@comcast.net
http://www.teamliberty.net/

May 29, 2006

An Open Letter to the 9/11 Commission

Dear 9/11 Commissioners,

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand." The United States is now divided on what it believes about September 11, 2001. A CNN poll conducted on March 25, 2006 revealed that 84% of the 52 thousand people polled now believe that the U.S. government has not thoroughly answered 9/11 questions. 84 percent!

Between May 12, 2006 and May 16, 2006, Zogby International conducted a nationwide poll pertaining to the government’s account of 9/11. Here are the results:

Bush exploited Sept. 11th attacks 44%
US government and 9/11 Commission are covering up 42%
9/11 should be reinvestigated 45%

I believe this government, our country, cannot endure permanently with tens of millions believing that the government is involved in a cover-up regarding September 11th 2001. The United States of America is divided. The division is so great that resolution must now be found. In my opinion, re-opening 9/11 is a matter of national defense. “Debate” is the answer. The National 9/11 Debate will be an outward sign of an inward desire to resolve the unanswered and persistent questions that remain about what really happened in the United States on September 11, 2001.

So what should patriotic Americans do with our grievances? We have called for a debate. Not just a few Americans want this debate – Tens of millions of Americans are demanding answers to be derived from a public – people’s forum. It is the enormity of those that oppose the government’s account of 9/11 that has prompted me to draw the line in the sand, to pick a date, time, and location to have a public debate on 9/11. I then sought out the most reputable and credentialed experts from the 9/11 Truth Movement to debate members of the 9/11 Commission and the NIST scientists.

The seven-member debate team that will dispute the government account of 9/11 is as follows:

Philip J. Berg, Esquire is a Former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, and the attorney for plaintiffs in 9-11 RICO Suit vs. Bush. His web site, 911forthetruth.com covers the RICO lawsuit against Bush, Cheney, and 53 other defendants in Federal Court.

James H. Fetzer a Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, the author or editor of 27 books, and founder and co-chairman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

David Ray Griffin is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology at the Claremont Graduate School, where he taught for over 30 years, retiring in 2004. He has authored or edited over thirty books, including "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11" and “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11”.

Steven E. Jones is the co-chairman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University, an expert in cold fusion and solar energy who earned his Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, and who has authored an influential study of the collapse of the Twin Towers (WTC-1, WTC-2).

George Nelson, Colonel, USAF (retired) is a trained aircraft accident investigator who served as an Aircraft Maintenance Manager for more than 30 years and who was assigned additional duties as a member of aircraft accident investigation teams for the United States Air Force.

Morgan Reynolds is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Texas A&M. He is the former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor for President George W. Bush. He is also the former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis. In June 2005, Lew Rockwell published Reynolds’ article: Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?

Judy D. Wood is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University with degrees in Civil Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, and Materials Engineering Science. Professor Wood teaches courses in the areas of engineering mechanics and experimental stress analysis.

If your initial reaction regarding The National 9/11 Debate was negative - to not participate, I ask you to please reconsider for the sake of the nation. I recognize that such a debate could put the government in a vulnerable position, but based on the polls, to ignore the fact that nearly half your countrymen are not satisfied with what the government has reported on 9/11 will only deepen the division that is destroying the United States of America. It is my belief that the lack of support for the War in Iraq is rooted in the fact that nearly half the nation doesn’t believe the 9/11 Commission Report. After all, if you believe that the World Trade Center Building Seven collapsed as the result of controlled demolition – which it did, then it is easier to believe that the twin towers were also brought down with the aid of pre-planted explosives. With such a belief intact, how can an American support the so-called global war on terrorism and the war in Iraq?

The problem can no longer be ignored. Please take a lead role in assembling a seven-member government debate team that will debate the aforementioned seven-member civilian debate team in Charleston, SC on September 16, 2006. This event will confirm truths, uncover truths, and beg for truths, and while it will not possibly be able to satisfy all people, it will go a long way to heal some open wounds of a troubled nation.

The National 9/11 Debate will receive national media attention. Don’t let there be seven empty seats with the names of the 9/11 Commissioners and NIST scientists pasted on them for the world to see. Let’s do this debate. Let’s get it done.

Yours in Liberty,

E.F. Haas

ACTION ALERT: Please write your own letters to the 9/11 Commissioners and encourage their participation in The National 9/11 Debate.

Thomas Kean – Chairman
The National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy
1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036

Lee H. Hamilton
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20004-3027

Slade Gorton
Preston Gates & Ellis LLP
1735 New York Ave. NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20006-5221
Bob Kerrey
The New School in NYC
66 W. 12th St. Rm. 800
NY, NY 10011

James R. Thompson
Winston & Strawn LLP
35 W. Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601–9703

Jamie Gorelick
WilmerHale
1875 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20006

Richard Ben-Veniste
Mayer, Brown, Rowe, & Maw
1909 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006-1101

Timothy J. Roemer
Center for National Policy
One Massachusetts Ave. NW Suite 333
Washington, DC 20001

Fred F. Fielding
Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP
1776 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006

John F. Lehman
J.F. Lehman & Co.
2001 Jefferson Davis Highway Suite 607
Arlington, VA 22202

Journal of 9/11 Studies

2006-06-26T11:25:00.000-04:00

Check out the Journal of 9/11 Studies. After, please register for this forum and join the debate. All are welcome. These are issues that need to be discussed and there is much to be learned from each other. Take the time to educate yourself...or to educate others.

FRONTLINE: The Dark Side

2006-06-24T13:21:00.000-04:00

FRONTLINE: The Dark Side

A historical look at the people running the country and deciding policy. George W. Bush who?

Robert Novak archive, 9/11 -- simultaneous hijacking of 4 jetliners was an "inside job"

2006-06-24T12:14:00.000-04:00

Never forget what happened to us on 9/11, but do forget certain stories that come out suggesting something other than just terrorists harboring hatred for our freedom had anything to do with 9/11. This does seem to be the official government position on the questions we have pertaining to that day. Good thing there are patriots out there who archive this stuff.~~~Antagonist

Crime & Corruption
See other Crime & Corruption Articles

Title: Robert Novak archive, 9/11 -- simultaneous hijacking of 4 jetliners was an "inside job"
Source: Town Hall
URL Source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20010913.shtml
Published: Sep 13, 2001
Author: Robert Novak
Post Date: 2004-09-16 13:54:27 by palo verde

September 13, 2001

This is no pearl harbor

WASHINGTON -- Security experts and airline officials agree privately that the simultaneous hijacking of four jetliners was an "inside job," probably indicating complicity beyond malfeasance. This makes all the more ominous Tuesday's national catastrophe and its dismal consequences.

Nobody was more vigorous Tuesday in demanding tough military reprisal against the terrorists than former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. However, he was virtually alone in directing his rage not only at the assassins but also at security arrangements. "I thought we had solved that problem (of air skyjackings)," he said. He pointed out that effective airport security would have prevented the disaster that may exceed the 2,403 deaths in the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The analogy with the Japanese surprise attack was drawn endlessly by political leaders and journalists. Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, with a keen sense of history, disagreed: "This, after all, was not Pearl Harbor. We have not lost the Pacific fleet." Unlike Dec. 7, 1941, the second day of infamy was not perpetrated by an enemy that at that time was militarily superior and seemed to put this nation's very existence in question.

In the rage and mourning following Tuesday's disaster, few officials wanted to dwell on how a 10-year hiatus of airline hijackings in this country could be followed by four in one hour. At a minimum, the blame can be put on ill-trained, incompetent personnel performing the screening of passengers. At the worst, security experts fear collusion with the terrorists, possibly even extending to the cockpit. This is a subject that the airlines are loathe to discuss.

The immediate consequence, widely predicted by members of Congress, will be tighter security making life more difficult for airline travelers and other Americans. The instant security measures taken in Washington and around the country came after the greatest terrorist success in world history had run its course and would not have been effective in preventing disaster had it been put in place.

Of greater interest to members of congressional intelligence committees is the surprise element of the attacks. The CIA and FBI are internally at a low point of effectiveness. "Human intelligence" (spying) has been in decline for decades. No amount of security harassment of airline passengers will substitute for effective intelligence. Like Pearl Harbor, the lack of warning Sept. 11 will be investigated.

Unlike Pearl Harbor, however, there is no clear foe. While secret briefings of members of Congress point to Osama bin Laden as the source of the attacks, President Bush's Tuesday night address to the nation named no names. The government, at this writing, actually is not sure. Private sources indicate that the terrorists could be a splinter group of Osama, its identity and whereabouts as yet unknown.

An attack on Afghanistan for sheltering Osama's terrorists will put the United States in danger of being perceived, however incorrectly, as launching a holy war against Islam. There is strong sentiment in Congress for hitting somebody, somewhere who has unsavory terrorist credentials even if not connected with Tuesday's attack.
With a crippled CIA unable to target the assassins, the Bush administration seems headed to deliver the same kind of hammer blows that the Clinton administration used in the Kosovo war rather than surgical strikes aimed at the assassins.

Perhaps the biggest difference with Pearl Harbor is the cause of the conflict. Bush's eloquent call for unity talked of the need to "defend freedom." Unlike Nazi Germany's and Imperial Japan's drive for a new world order, however, the hatred toward the U.S. by the terrorists is an extension of its hatred of Israel rather than world dominion. Secretary of State Colin Powell's laudable efforts at being an even-handed peacemaker makes no difference to terrorists.

Stratfor.com, the private intelligence company, reported Tuesday: "The big winner today, intentionally or not, is the state of Israel." Whatever distance Bush wanted between U.S. and Israeli policy, it was eliminated by terror. The spectacle on television of Palestinian youths and mothers dancing in the streets of East Jerusalem over the slaughter of Americans will not soon be forgotten. The United States and Israel are brought ever closer in a way that cannot improve long-term U.S. policy objectives.

FAIR USE NOTICE: The above may be copyrighted material, and the use of it on LibertyPost.org may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available on a non-profit basis for educational and discussion purposes only. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 USC § 107. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

See also TIME article entitled: TIME Exclusive: An Inside Job? <--click link to article written on September 22, 2001.

Going out on a limb...

2006-06-22T09:46:00.000-04:00

Interesting to note that the secret Operation Northwoods document was declassified in 1997 through the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. I know it sounds crazy and all conspiracy theorist, but I'm becoming convinced that the JFK assassination is connected to the same people who are running the show now.

Quote:

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 created the Assassination Records Review Board as an independent agency to re-examine for release the assassination-related records that federal agencies still regarded as too sensitive to open to the public. The Board finished its work on September 30, 1998, issued a final report, and transferred all of its records to the National Archives and Records Administration. link

Perhaps people working behind the scenes (whistleblowers) have been trying to come out with information for years to warn us about the people we are dealing with? I imagine having any part of this information would make anybody more than a little nervous about stepping into the light.

JFK's assassination has never been solved to everyone's satisfaction and now there's about 80+% who believe there needs to be a new investigation into his murder. I think that 9/11 as well as JFK's assassination were all part of the same plan...to change the world and JFK's vision was a threat.

Watch this video

Was it an inside job?

2006-06-21T13:53:00.000-04:00

I don't know, but I do know that we are in trouble as we were not only witness to 9/11's destruction and loss of life, we are also seeing a lot of what it all meant. Those who are truly trying to understand the magnitude of the issue do consider all sides. We do not want to be exposed for the monstrous tactics which got us to this point. To be defined in such vile terms is heart-wrenching. We desperately want to be told something that we can believe. Does it matter if it hurts us terribly to find out? Not if it's the truth. Think about the division we are experiencing as humanity is forced into this predicament.

Muslim terrorism has been created and perpetuated by the foreign policy of the USA. It's disheartening to see so much ignorance in this country, but it's rather calming to confront the tyranny and prepare for consequences as I continue to at least hold onto the right of free speech and can decry the oppression.

Activists who stand with me are not going to go away and we'll grow in numbers as more and more intelligent, compassionate people learn exactly what's been done in our name. The government or elements therein are not this country and they deserve no respect or consideration for the terrible deeds they do under the banner of so-called national security.

Are Muslims the real danger to our existence or is it something else? Have we created the monster they are holding up in a terrorist enemy? The biggest threat to this country is the tyranny by which we are ruled.

Checks and balances have gone out the door and we have in its place an executive branch run amok. Signing statements allow for legitimate laws to be broken by certain people while others become the victims of these broken laws. People are being spirited away, held in confinement with little access to courts and possibly even to family members. They are tortured and humiliated then sent back to their country of origin to incite more of the hatred that exacerbates the problem.

The Constitution provides a remedy--impeachment. The time is now, not after elections that may make it an impossible endeavor if they are again hijacked.

Like those who accuse conspiracy theorists of only researching those areas that support their position, so too have those when it comes to researching and trying to understand near eastern religious dogma. This is why we have fearful people out there screaming that all Muslims and Arabs are a threat and we should deal with them as a whole. It's judging the group for the actions of the few. It's refusing to acknowledge individuality.

As one who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, one who has educated herself by considering all sides, i've found that there is definitely something wrong especially when our foreign policy breeds such hatred and ignorance when it comes to those they've labeled our enemies.

The system is broken...the country is bankrupt and we are witnessing the decline of the American Empire.

What are you going to do when the war comes to America? Are you going to kill all the Muslims as well as all the other people who stand with them and support their right to exist in this country?

We're on the verge of catastrophe and the ignorance that’s been thusly exhibited is going to hasten the inevitable.

One has to wonder how the military feels about current events when things are seemingly so fubar. The way we're going about combating terrorism has turned it into a bigger threat than ever before in our existence. You can't fight terrorism like that. With every operation ordered by the civilian leadership and executed by our troops we are creating 10x the problem. They told them they were fighting for freedom but as freedom gets taken away, that lie is exposed, so what are we really fighting for?

Terrorism is merely a symptom of our own foreign policy. Does that make me anti-American? Hell no, it makes me anti-fascist or something which is what we are resembling with the propaganda machine churning out movies like United 93 and World Trade Center. Our media is censored and pseudo-patriots shout down the more sensible minority who question motives.

It's time the people organize and educate others who are being blinded by an illusion cobbled together by some talented magicians in the state department. The time to take action was yesterday.

Doesn't anybody even understand what is happening?

We must impeach these people, call for a cease fire...bring home the troops and face the consequences of the bankruptcy and specious foreign policy that got us here.

JFK Secret Society Speech

2006-06-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

Record this...remember it...spread it around.

JFK Secret Society Speech

Explosive. As I get more information about this speech, such as where and when it was made, I will update this post.

Hunter S. Thompson

2006-06-18T11:35:00.000-04:00

Hunter S. Thompson

The godfather of gonzo says 9/11 caused a "nationwide nervous breakdown" -- and let the Bush crowd loot the country and savage American democracy.

By John Glassie

Pages 1 2 3

February 3, 2003

He calls himself "an elderly dope fiend living out in the wilderness," but will also be found this week on the New York Times bestseller list with a new memoir, "Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century."

Listening to his ragged voice, there is some sense that Thompson, now 65, has reined in his outlaw ways, gotten a little softer, perhaps a little more gracious now that he's reached retirement age. "I've found you can deal with the system a lot easier if you use their rules," he says. "I talk to a lot of lawyers."

But do not be deceived. In "Kingdom of Fear" and in a telephone interview with Salon from his compound in Aspen, Colo., Thompson did what he's always done: speak the truth about American society as he sees it, without worrying much about decorum.

"Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?" he writes, referring to the people currently occupying the White House. "They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis."

That's his enduring attitude in this new age of darkness: a lot more loathing than fear.

The godfather of gonzo believes America has suffered a "nationwide nervous breakdown" since 9/11, and as a result is compromising civil liberties for what he calls "the illusion of security." The compromise, he says, is "a disaster of unthinkable proportions" and "part of the downward spiral of dumbness" he believes is plaguing the country.

While the country's spinning out of control, Thompson says his own lifestyle has been a model of consistency. He still does whatever the hell he wants. In fact, his new book was supposed to be a "definitive memoir of his life," a long look back by the man who rode with the Hell's Angels, who experienced the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and who has smoked more cigarettes, driven more fast cars, fired more weapons and done more drugs than most living people, let alone most living authors. But the book is much more than memoir.

Thompson has long been an outspoken and vigorous champion of civil liberties, at least since a well-publicized 1990 case in which he was charged with sexual and physical assault and possession of illegal drugs -- charges that were ultimately dropped due to an illegal search and seizure.

Of course, the writer has distrusted power all his life, and it may come as no surprise that he now believes the administration is "manufacturing" the Iraqi threat for its own political gain and the economic gain of the "oligarchy" (read: the military-industrial complex).

Perhaps Thompson's most disturbing charge is aimed at the American people -- only half of whom exercise their right to vote. "The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public. And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny," he says. "I think that's what worries me."

In the end, however, Thompson is not and has never been that easy to pigeonhole. He's friends with Pat Buchanan and has a lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association. In his own mind, if not in others', he is "one of the most patriotic people I've ever encountered in America."

Your new book, "Kingdom of Fear," is being called a definitive memoir -- although almost all of your books seem to be autobiographical in one way or another. What's the difference between the written accounts -- of drug use, run-ins with the law, sex, fast cars, guns and explosives -- and real-life events?

I don't really see any difference. Telling the truth is the easiest way; it saves a lot of time. I've found that the truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen. There was a girl that worked for me a long time ago, who graduated third in her class from Georgetown Law School, and was from some kind of uptown family in Chicago, and instead of going to work for some big-time firm, she came to Aspen and ends up working for me out here in the wilderness. A year or so later her mother or father were coming out to visit. I've had some understandable issues with parents -- really all my life. And I'd be worried about my daughter, too, if she'd run off with some widely known infamous monster. And so I asked her -- just so I could get braced for this situation, meeting the parents and having them come to the house: "Given what you know about me and what you hear about me, which is worse?" She finally came out and said there was no question in her mind that the reality was heavier and crazier and more dangerous. Having to deal with the reality is no doubt a little more traumatic.

Indeed, your author blurb says you live in "a fortified compound near Aspen, Colorado." In what sense is it fortified and why does it need to be?

Actually, I live in an extremely pastoral setting in an old log house. It's a farm really. I moved here 30 years ago. I think the only fortification might be my reputation. If people believe they're going to be shot, they might stay away.

Yes, I understand you're a gun enthusiast, to put it euphemistically. But do you support more restrictive gun laws? Do you support a ban on assault weapons?

I have one or two of those, but I got them before they were illegal. In that case, if I were sure that any tragedies and mass murders would be prevented, I'd give up my assault rifle. But I don't really believe that. Do I have any illegal weapons? No. I have a .454 magnum revolver, which is huge, and it's absolutely legal. One day I was wild-eyed out here with Johnny Depp, and we both ordered these guns from Freedom, Wyo., and got them the next day through FedEx. Mainly, I have rifles, pistols, shotguns; I have a lot of those. But everything I have is top quality; I don't have any junk weapons. I wouldn't have any military weapon around here, except as an artifact of some kind. Given Ashcroft and the clear blueprint of this administration to make everything illegal and everything suspicious -- how about suspicion of being a terrorist sympathizer? Goddamn, talk about filling up your concentration camps. But, yeah, my police record is clean. This is not a fortified compound.

So, just to clarify, how do your views stack up with the NRA's?

I think I'm still a life member of the NRA. I formed a gun club out here, an official sporting club, and I got charter from the NRA. That made it legal to have guns here, to bring guns here, to have ammunition sent here, that sort of thing. I've found you can deal with the system a lot easier if you use their rules -- by understanding their rules, by using their rules against them. I talk to a lot of lawyers. You know, I consider Pat Buchanan a friend. I don't agree with him on many things. Personally, I enjoy him. I just like him. And I learn from Pat. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I never had anybody busted, arrested, jailed for my writing about them. I never had any -- what's that? -- collateral damage.

Next page: "These are not philosopher-kings we're talking about"
Pages 1 2 3
This article was originally published in a different format. You may be able to view the original format on this page.

In case the article disappears or the links don't work, the text for page 2 and 3 follows:~~Antagonist

Hunter S. Thompson
Pages 1 2 3

But speaking of rules, you've been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what's common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis--vis the law?

Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis--vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.

In 1990, you were put on trial for what you call "sex, drugs, dynamite and violence." Charges were eventually dropped. Since then, you've been outspoken on Fourth Amendment issues: search and seizure, the right to privacy. I assume you've taken a side in the civil liberties debate that's come up in the aftermath of 9/11?

It's a disaster of unthinkable proportions -- part of the downward spiral of dumbness. Civil liberties are black and white issues. I don't think people think far enough to see the ramifications. The PATRIOT Act was a dagger in the heart, really, of even the concept of a democratic government that is free, equal and just. There are a lot more concentration camps right now than Guantanamo Bay. But they're not marked. Now, every jail, every bush-league cop can run a concentration camp. It amounts to a military and police takeover, I think.

Well, as some have pointed out, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Is some suspension of civil liberties ever appropriate or justified in a time of war?

If there's a visible, obvious threat like Hitler, but in my mind the administration is using these bogeymen for their own purposes. This military law is nothing like the Constitution. They're exploiting the formula here: The people are afraid of something and you offer a solution, however drastic, and they go along with it. For a while, yeah. My suspicions are more justified every day with this manufacturing of dangerous killer villains. The rest of the world does not perceive, I don't think, that some tin-horn dictator in the Middle East is more of a danger to the world than the U.S. is. This country depends on war as a primary industry. The White House has pumped up the danger factor because it's to their advantage. It's to John Ashcroft's advantage. There have always been pros and cons about the righteousness of life in America but this just seems planned, it seems consistent, and it seems traditional.

What do they get out of it?

They get control of the U.S. economy, their friends get rich. These are not philosopher-kings we're talking about. These are politicians. It's a very sleazy way of using the system. One of the problems today is that what's going on today is not as complex as it seems. The Pentagon just asked for another $14 billion more in the budget, and it's already $28 billion. [Defense spending in the 2003 budget rose $19.4 billion, to $364.6 billion]. That's one sector of the economy that's not down the tubes. So, some people are getting rich off of this. It's the oligarchy. I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth. The GOP is the party of capital. It's pretty basic. And it may have something to do with the deterioration of educational system in this country. I don't think Bush has the slightest intention or concern about educating the public.

Many people would say you're un-American and unpatriotic.

I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way -- not by donations, I work at it.

Well, what do you prescribe? What do you advocate?

All the blood is drained out of democracy -- it dies -- when only half the population votes. I would use the vote. It would seem to me that people who have been made afraid, if you don't like what's happening, if you don't want to go to war, if you don't want to be broke, well for God's sake don't go out and vote for the very bastards who are putting you there. That's a pillar of any democratic future in this country. The party of capital is not interested in having every black person in Louisiana having access to the Ivy League. They don't need an educated public.

So what took place during this past election?

I believe the Republicans have seen what they've believed all along, which is that this democracy stuff is bull, and that people don't want to be burdened by political affairs. That people would rather just be taken care of. The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public. And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny. I think that's what worries me. It goes back to Fourth Amendment issues. How much do you value your freedom? Would you trade your freedom for some illusion of security? Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

This is coming from someone who's described himself as "an elderly dope fiend who lives out in the wilderness" and also as a "drunken screwball."

A dangerous drunken screwball.

Next page: "Not everybody is made for this life"

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Hunter S. Thompson
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Right. Sorry. So why would anybody listen to you?

I don't have to apologize for any political judgments I've made. The stuff I wrote in the '60s and '70s was astonishingly accurate. I may have been a little rough on Nixon, but he was rough. You had to do it with him. What you believe has to be worth something. I've never given it a lot of thought: I've never hired people to figure out what I should do about my image. I always work the same way, and talk the same way, and I've been right enough that I stand by my record.

But is there a sense in which your views are, by definition, going to be seen as fringe views -- views that can just be discarded?

That is a problem and I guess "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" might have colored the way people perceive me. But I haven't worried that people see me as "dope fiend," I'd rather get rid of the "elderly" rather than the "dope fiend."

What's the best example of something you were right about?

Christ, the Hell's Angels certainly. Police agencies regarded that book as a major primary resource on motorcycle gangs. I started covering presidential politics after I realized how easy it was to manipulate the political machinery in this county -- or almost officially doing it -- by running for sheriff. I saw that there might be some serious fun in politics. I covered Goldwater's convention in 1964. And I went from Nixon to Kennedy to Nixon. I wanted to have some say in events, just for my own safety.

You have famously attached yourself to the word "fear" since you wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Now you've written "Kingdom of Fear." Will you explain?

This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they're threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don't think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things -- of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance.

You write in "Kingdom of Fear" about the passing of the American century --

That's official, by the way. The American century was the 20th, so sayeth Henry Luce. And when it ends, Christ, you can't avoid thinking: "Ye Gods!"

To whom or what is the 21st century going to belong?

That's something I have not divined yet. Goddammit, I couldn't have told you in 1960 what 1980 was going to be like.

You've also referred to your beat as the "Death of the American Dream." That was the ostensible "subject" of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Has it just sort of been on its deathbed since 1968?

I think that's right.

A lot of people would argue with you about that anyway, and believe that the American Dream is alive and well.

They need to take a better look around.

But in a way, haven't you lived the American Dream?

Goddammit! [pause] I haven't thought about it that way. I suppose you could say that in a certain way I have.

You said back in 1991 that you were "as astounded as anybody" that you were still alive. Still drinking, smoking and doing drugs?

I guess I'd have to say I haven't changed. Why should I, really? I'm the most stable neighbor on the road here. I'm an honest person. I don't regret being honest. I did give up petty crime when I turned 18, after I got a look at jail -- I went in there for shoplifting -- because I just saw that this stuff doesn't work. There's a line: "I do not advocate the use of dangerous drugs, wild amounts of alcohol and violence and weirdness -- but they've always worked for me." I think I said that at a speech at Stanford. I've always been a little worried about advocating my way of life, or gauging my success by having other people take up my way of life, like Tim Leary did. I always quarreled with Leary about that. I could have started a religion a long time ago. It would not have a majority of people in it, but there would be a lot of them. But I don't know how wise I am. I don't know what kind of a role model I am. And not everybody is made for this life.

In fact, you've experienced more than your share of dangerous situations. You've been beaten by the Hell's Angels. You were in the middle of the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. You've been shot at. What's going on with that?

By any widely accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once and there were 13 times that I almost and maybe should have died -- from emergencies with fires to violence, drowning, bombs. I guess I am an action junkie, yeah. There may be some genetic imperative that caused me to get into certain situations. It's curiosity, I guess. As long as I'm learning something I figure I'm OK -- it's a decent day.

Is there anything you regret?

That goes to the question of would you do it again. If you can't say you'd do it again, it means that time was wasted -- useless. The regrets I have are so minor. You know, would I leave my Keith Richards hat, with the silver skull on it, on the stool at the coffee shop at LaGuardia? I wouldn't do that again. But overall, no, I don't have any regrets.

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Know thine enemy

2006-06-12T20:18:00.000-04:00

I’ve been participating on a forum that has been created to discuss the movie World Trade Center. One of the threads asked a simple question--Are Muslims and Arabs horrible bad people? It was written by a young Bosnian Muslim girl who experienced prejudice by her peers after 9/11. The thread grew to include about a 50/50 split amongst those responding. Fifty percent felt that Muslims should be dealt with harshly just because of their religious beliefs. Keep in mind that this forum attracts a worldwide audience, but it’s probably safe to say that many of those responding negatively were probably Americans. The following is an essay I put together from some of my responses during the debate. I thought I would post it here to preserve the sentiment.

Muslim terrorism has been created and perpetuated by the foreign policy of the USA. It's disheartening to see so much ignorance in this country, but it's rather calming to confront the tyranny and prepare for consequences as I continue to at least hold onto the right of free speech and can decry the oppression on my lonely little blog in cyberspace.

Activists who stand with me are not going to go away and we'll grow in numbers as more and more intelligent, compassionate people learn exactly what's been done in our name. The government or elements therein are not this country and they deserve no respect or consideration for the terrible deeds they do under the banner of so-called national security.

Are Muslims the real danger to our existence or is it something else? Have we created the monster they are holding up in a terrorist enemy? The biggest threat to this country is the tyranny by which we are ruled.

Checks and balances have gone out the door and we have in its place an executive branch run amok. The Constitution provides a remedy--impeachment. The time is now, not after elections that may make it an impossible endeavor if they are again hijacked.

Like those who accuse conspiracy theorists of only researching those areas that support their position, so too have those when it comes to researching and trying to understand middle eastern religious dogma. This is why we have fearful people out there screaming that all Muslims and Arabs are a threat and we should deal with them as a whole. It’s enough to make a person pull their hair out in exasperation.

As one who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, one who has educated herself by considering all sides, there is definitely something wrong when our foreign policy breeds such hatred and ignorance as it comes to who they've labeled our enemies.

The system is broken...the country is bankrupt and we are witnessing the decline of the American Empire.

What are you going to do when the war comes to America? Are you going to kill all the Muslims as well as all the other people who stand with them and support their right to exist in this country?

We're on the verge of catastrophe and the ignorance that’s been thusly exhibited is going to hasten the inevitable.

I often wonder how the military feels about current events when things are seemingly so fubar. The way we're going about combating terrorism has turned it into a bigger threat than ever before in our existence. You can't fight terrorism like that. With every operation ordered by the civilian leadership and executed by our troops we are creating 10x the problem.

I’ll say it again, terrorism is merely a symptom of our own foreign policy. Does that make me anti-American? Hell no, it makes me anti-fascist which is what we are becoming with the propaganda machine churning out movies like United 93 and World Trade Center. Our media is censored and pseudo-patriots shout down the more sensible minority who question motives.

It's time the people organize and educate others who are being blinded by an illusion cobbled together by some talented magicians in the state department. The time to take action was yesterday.

Doesn't anybody even understand what is happening? Fascism oppresses the people who turn into such sissies that they propose walls along their borders because they are living in fear. Would Ronald Reagan have approved of such a wall?

We must impeach these people, call for a cease fire...bring home the troops and face the consequences of the bankruptcy and specious foreign policy that got us here.

Letter to Senator Chuck Hagel

2006-06-10T13:46:00.000-04:00

How can you go about doing the business of the people when we are being ruled by a tyrant? Do you condone tyrannical deeds?

Our system of checks and balances has gone out the door and still you just sit and formulate ideas to enable our march to fascism. Didn't our forefathers provide for a solution to the dilemma we find ourselves in? Impeachment is the answer. Not just the President, but the entire executive branch must be eradicated. Drastic measures must be taken. We are surely on our way to something that is less free than we have enjoyed in our past. You must realize this, unless you are a part of the machinery that got us to this point.

Transparency in government is needed for the people to play their part in being informed enough to cast their ballots. Those of us who have taken the time to educate ourselves have come to some awful conclusions about where we've been, who we are now and where we are headed. Declassified government documents released to the public and pointed to by whistleblowers have awakened a sleeping giant in the people who put you in office. Notice that legislature has been suggested to re-classify many of those documents, in which case we the people will lose out on being included in the process. We will remain ignorant. Is this how we want to be defined?

Do something before it's too late. Sign onto Senator Feingold's measure to censure and call for impeachment proceedings to commence in the house. You know it's the right thing to do.

The Zarqawi Invitation

2006-06-10T11:54:00.000-04:00

Unreported: The Zarqawi Invitation
By Greg Palast
t r u t h o u t Report

Friday 09 June 2006

They got him - the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi - who invited him into Iraq in the first place?

If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.

The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack, Jack - you're fired.

What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner's job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.

Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.

"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."

But elections were not in The Plan.

The Plan was a 101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we'd just conquered. There was nothing in it about democracy or elections or safety. There was, rather, a detailed schedule for selling off "all [Iraq's] state assets" - and Iraq, that's just about everything - "especially," said The Plan, "the oil and supporting industries." Especially the oil.

There was more than oil to sell off. The Plan included the sale of Iraq's banks, and weirdly, changing it's copyright laws and other odd items that made the plan look less like a program for Iraq to get on its feet than a program for corporate looting of the nation's assets. (And indeed, we discovered at BBC, behind many of the odder elements - copyright and tax code changes - was the hand of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's associate Grover Norquist.)

But Garner didn't think much of The Plan, he told me when we met a year later in Washington. He had other things on his mind. "You prevent epidemics, you start the food distribution program to prevent famine."

Seizing title and ownership of Iraq's oil fields was not on Garner's must-do list. He let that be known to Washington. "I don't think [Iraqis] need to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government that represents the freely elected will of the people." He added, "It's their country, their oil."

Apparently, the Secretary of Defense disagreed. So did lobbyist Norquist. And Garner incurred their fury by getting carried away with the "democracy" idea: he called for quick elections - within 90 days of the taking of Baghdad.

But Garner's 90-days-to-elections commitment ran straight into the oil sell-off program. Annex D of the plan indicated that would take at least 270 days - at least 9 months.

Worse, Garner was brokering a truce between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. They were about to begin what Garner called a "Big Tent" meeting to hammer out the details and set the election date. He figured he had 90 days to get it done before the factions started slitting each other's throats.

But a quick election would mean the end of the state-asset sell-off plan: An Iraqi-controlled government would never go along with what would certainly amount to foreign corporations swallowing their entire economy. Especially the oil. Garner had spent years in Iraq, in charge of the Northern Kurdish zone and knew Iraqis well. He was certain that an asset-and-oil grab, "privatizations," would cause a sensitive population to take up the gun. "That's just one fight you don't want to take on right now."

But that's just the fight the neo-cons at Defense wanted. And in Rumsfeld's replacement for Garner, they had a man itching for the fight. Paul Bremer III had no experience on the ground in Iraq, but he had one unbeatable credential that Garner lacked: Bremer had served as Managing Director of Kissinger and Associates.

In April 2003, Bremer instituted democracy Bush style: he canceled elections and appointed the entire government himself. Two months later, Bremer ordered a halt to all municipal elections including the crucial vote to Shia seeking to select a mayor in the city of Najaf. The front-runner, moderate Shia Asad Sultan Abu Gilal warned, "If they don't give us freedom, what will we do? We have patience, but not for long." Local Shias formed the "Mahdi Army," and within a year, provoked by Bremer's shutting their paper, attacked and killed 21 U.S. soldiers.

The insurgency had begun. But Bremer's job was hardly over. There were Sunnis to go after. He issued "Order Number One: De-Ba'athification." In effect, this became "De-Sunni-fication."

Saddam's generals, mostly Sunnis, who had, we learned, secretly collaborated with the US invasion and now expected their reward found themselves hunted and arrested. Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born US resident who helped with the pre-invasion brokering, told me, "U.S. forces imprisoned all those we named as political leaders," who stopped Iraq's army from firing on U.S. troops.

Aljibury's main concern was that busting Iraqi collaborators and Ba'athist big shots was a gift "to the Wahabis," by which he meant the foreign insurgents, who now gained experienced military commanders, Sunnis, who now had no choice but to fight the US-installed regime or face arrest, ruin or death. They would soon link up with the Sunni-defending Wahabi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was committed to destroying "Shia snakes."

And the oil fields? It was, Aljibury noted, when word got out about the plans to sell off the oil fields (thanks to loose lips of the US-appointed oil minister) that pipelines began to blow. Although he had been at the center of planning for invasion, Aljibury now saw the greed-crazed grab for the oil fields as the fuel for a civil war that would rip his country to pieces:

"Insurgents," he said, "and those who wanted to destabilize a new Iraq have used this as means of saying, 'Look, you're losing your country. You're losing your leadership. You're losing all of your resources to a bunch of wealthy people. A bunch of billionaires in the world want to take you over and make your life miserable.' And we saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, of course, built on - built on the premise that privatization [of oil] is coming."

General Garner, watching the insurgency unfold from the occupation authority's provocations, told me, in his understated manner, "I'm a believer that you don't want to end the day with more enemies than you started with."

But you can't have a war president without a war. And you can't have a war without enemies. "Bring 'em on," our Commander-in-Chief said. And Zarqawi answered the call.

--------

Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse out this week from Penguin Dutton, from which this is adapted. Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Order it now.

Take a stand, Impeachment is the only answer

2006-06-09T09:26:00.000-04:00

Those of us who are connected to the truth movement are soldiers in a war. What we have to do is find common ground. Basically, we want to preserve this Republic.

This is not America...this is what our forefathers warned us about with too much power concentrated in too few hands. Impeachment is the only answer--it doesn't matter who we elect in November, Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Greens, whoever. It is the right thing to do. We must demand transparency. We must demand special counsel to undertake investigating this administration and the misdeeds they have done...and there are many aside from 9/11.

We cannot wait for elections because people worldwide are in danger. Those connected to this movement have been threatened and bribed to force them into silence. Luckily, those who they've tried to intimidate have not kept quiet.

The powers that be understand keeping up with the Joneses and our own incomparable Dr. Steven Jones and the firey, preacher-like Alex Jones are not going away quietly, thank goodness. Those for the opposition are going to have to put up or shut up...and don't try putting up the 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST report because they do not address many of our concerns.

A new, impartial investigation must be conducted using the evidence gathered since 9/11...videos, eyewitness accounts, any materials that should be available to ongoing criminal cases connected to 9/11, historical information should be made available to the public. (Operation Northwoods, nazi connection, federal reserve, bankruptcy of the nation, etc.) Dr. Jones' research must be vigorously reviewed and seriously considered.

It's past time to take a stand and do what's right for the planet. I wish we could stop being arrogant about how we define ourselves. We are and always have been a melting pot represented by all nations. It's time to start acting like it.

Constitutional Showdown?

2006-06-08T01:44:00.000-04:00

Could we possibly be finally getting to some accountability with our Legislature? <--Click for article
Specter warns of 'confrontation' over NSA hearings
Chairman scolds Cheney, still seeks White House cooperation
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Senate committee
chairman warned of a "constitutional confrontation" with the Bush administration Wednesday over its domestic surveillance program, threatening to subpoena administration officials or phone company executives in a congressional review.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter publicly complained about the Bush administration's refusal to cooperate with his panel Tuesday and sent a stinging letter to Vice President Dick Cheney after learning Cheney had lobbied other Republicans on his committee without his knowledge.
"I'm not looking for courtesy," the Pennsylvania Republican told CNN. "What I'm looking for is judicial review of wiretaps, which is the tradition in America." (Watch Specter detail reasons for feud -- 7:22)

9/11 Widows respond to Coulter's poison pen

2006-06-08T00:37:00.000-04:00

The following is a statement made by five 9/11 widows in answer to Ann Coulter's attacks on them in her most recent book. Coulter represents much of what is wrong with American society. Her insensitive attacks on people are not funny (as she apparently thinks) and do nothing but divide us and perpetuate her ignorance through those who share her twisted views. Shame on her and everybody who buys this book. Widows statement:

We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens.

Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?

We are forced to respond to Ms. Coulter’s accusations to set the record straight because we have been slandered.

Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.

It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11.

We are continuously reminded that we are still a nation at risk. Therefore, the following is a partial list of areas still desperately in need of attention and public outcry. We should continuously be holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire to fix these shortcomings.

1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain under-protected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.

4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.

5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world – particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.

6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.

7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.

8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President’s NSA Surveillance Program and the re-instatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights.

-- September 11th Advocates

Kristen Breitweiser
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken

Officer Refuses Orders to Fight in Iraq

2006-06-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

Officer refuses orders to fight in Iraq <--click for Seattle Times article

"I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. "It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order—including the order to go to war."

From ABC news <--click for link to article

"It is my duty as a commissioned officer of the United States Army to speak out against grave injustices." said 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a member of the Stryker unit, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. "My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not those who would issue unlawful orders. It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong, but a horrible breach of American law."

If all of our officers acted on their patriotic duty they would be refusing these illegal orders, honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and call into question the imbalance in Washington D.C. to confront our real reasons for fighting these Middle Eastern wars.

A New World Order may indeed be something that is needed to address the planet's problems, however forcing it at gunpoint is just plain ignorant, incompassionate, hateful and wrong. Foreign policy is conducted with little regard to anything except the preservation of concentrated wealth. The federal reserve is in private hands. When's the last time there was a true accounting done at Fort Knox? I'm just sayin....

The Bankruptcy of the United States

Perhaps a clue as to why some feel the need to go to war. Follow the money. What or who are we really fighting for?

FBI: No Hard Evidence Linking bin Laden to 9/11

2006-06-07T10:39:00.000-04:00

FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

June 6, 2006 – This past weekend, a thought provoking e-mail circulated through Internet news groups, bringing attention to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist web page for Usama Bin Laden.[1] (See bottom of this web page for Most Wanted page) In the e-mail, the question is asked, “Why doesn’t Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster make any direct connection with the events of September 11, 2001?” The FBI says on its Bin Laden web page that Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. According to the FBI, these attacks killed over 200 people. The FBI concludes its reason for “wanting” Bin Laden by saying, “In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorists attacks throughout the world.”

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”

It shouldn’t take long before the full meaning of these FBI statements start to prick your brain and raise your blood pressure. If you think the way I think, in quick order you will be wrestling with a barrage of very powerful questions that must be answered. First and foremost, if the U.S. government does not have enough hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, how is it possible that it had enough evidence to invade Afghanistan to “smoke him out of his cave?” The federal government claims to have invaded Afghanistan to “root out” Bin Laden and the Taliban. Through the talking heads in the mainstream media, the Bush Administration told the American people that Usama Bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One and responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on September 11, 2001. Yet nearly five years later, the FBI says that it has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.

Next is the Bin Laden “confession” video that was released by the U.S. government on December 13, 2001. Most Americans remember this video. It was the video showing Bin Laden with a few of his comrades recounting with delight the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. The Department of Defense issued a press release to accompany this video in which Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said, “There was no doubt of bin Laden’s responsibility for the September 11 attacks before the tape was discovered.”[2] What Rumsfeld implied by his statement was that Bin Laden was the known mastermind behind 9/11 even before the “confession video” and that the video simply served to confirm what the U.S. government already knew; that Bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

In a BBC News article[3] reporting on the “9/11 confession video” release, President Bush is said to have been hesitate to release the tape because he knew it would be a vivid reminder to many people of their loss. But, he also knew it would be “a devastating declaration” of Bin Laden’s guilt. “Were going to get him,” said President Bush. “Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter to me.”

In a CNN article[4] regarding the Bin Laden tape, then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that “the tape removes any doubt that the U.S. military campaign targeting bin Laden and his associates is more than justified.” Senator Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, “The tape’s release is central to informing people in the outside world who don’t believe bin Laden was involved in the September 11 attacks.” Shelby went on to say “I don’t know how they can be in denial after they see this tape.” Well Senator Shelby, apparently the Federal Bureau of Investigation isn’t convinced by the taped confession, so why are you?

The Muckraker Report attempted to secure a reference to the U.S. government authenticating the Bin Laden “confession video”, to no avail. However, it is conclusive that the Bush Administration and U.S. Congress, along with the dead stream media, played the video as if it was authentic. So why doesn’t the FBI view the “confession video” as hard evidence? After all, if the FBI is investigating a crime such as drug trafficking, and it discovers a video of members of a drug cartel opening talking about a successful distribution operation in the United States, that video would be presented to a federal grand jury. The identified participants of the video would be indicted, and if captured, the video alone would serve as sufficient evidence to net a conviction in a federal court. So why is the Bin Laden “confession video” not carrying the same weight with the FBI?

Remember, on June 5, 2006, FBI spokesman, Chief of Investigative Publicity Rex Tomb said, “The FBI has no hard evidence connecting Usama Bin Laden to 9/11.” This should be headline news worldwide. The challenge to the reader is to find out why it is not. Why has the U.S. media blindly read the government-provided 9/11 scripts, rather than investigate without passion, prejudice, or bias, the events of September 11, 2001? Why has the U.S. media blacklisted any guest that might speak of a government sponsored 9/11 cover-up, rather than seeking out those people who have something to say about 9/11 that is contrary to the government’s account? And on those few rare occasions when a 9/11 dissenter has made it upon the airways, why has the mainstream media ridiculed the guest as a conspiracy nut, rather than listen to the evidence that clearly raises valid questions about the government’s 9/11 account? Why is the Big Media Conglomeration blindly content with the government’s 9/11 story when so much verifiable information to the contrary is available with a few clicks of a computer mouse?

Who is it that is controlling the media message, and how is it that the U.S. media has indicted Usama Bin Laden for the events of September 11, 2001, but the U.S. government has not? How is it that the FBI has no “hard evidence” connecting Usama Bin Laden to the events of September 11, 2001, while the U.S. media has played the Bin Laden - 9/11 connection story for five years now as if it has conclusive evidence that Bin Laden is responsible for the collapse of the twin towers, the Pentagon attack, and the demise of United Flight 93?

…No hard evidence connecting Usama Bin Laden to 9/11… Think about it.
[1] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Most Wanted Terrorists, Usama Bin Laden, http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm, [Accessed May 31, 2006]
[2] United States Department of Defense, News Release, U.S. Releases Videotape of Osama bin Laden, December 13, 2001, http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2001/b12132001_bt630-01.html, [Accessed June 5, 2006]
[3] BBC News, Bin Laden video angers New Yorkers, December 14, 2001, Peter Gould, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1711874.stm, [Accessed June 5, 2006]
[4] CNN, Bin Laden on tape: Attacks ‘benefited Islam greatly”, December 14, 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/ret.bin.laden.videotape, [Accessed June 5, 2006]

The Blame Game

2006-06-06T12:25:00.000-04:00

If the official version of 9/11 is untrue, complicity in the deed would encompass many people from many walks of life. It doesn't do anybody any good to perpetuate hate. I will never point fingers at any one nation as many would need to be complicit in the execution and cover-up.

Look at the persecution ordinary Muslims are going through because so many blame the religion of these people to justify oppressing and attacking them. Granted, women are really treated as second-class citizens for many who practice this dogma, but is it for us to decide how people interpret moral code?

As long as this planet harbors selfish evil people, we will never enjoy peace and harmony. Every nation and every race of people has their own good and bad. Humanity seems to be devolving when it comes to accepting each other as equals. It's sad to witness hatred and mistrust being perpetuated by so many.

We come from different nations, our colors vary, we are different in many ways but we are alike in so many others. We have to concentrate on our commonality rather than our differences. We've been lamenting this from our earliest beginnings. It's time to come together or we will surely destroy ourselves.

Reasonable Doubt

2006-06-06T10:07:00.000-04:00

People know something isn't right but the massive scale of it guarantees that nobody will ever have 100% positive proof. We definitely have reasonable doubt as to the guilt of those who the government has named. Usama bin Laden initially declined to take credit for the event, although it did please him, as well as it did most Muslims. Many also say that they believe 100% that 19 hijacked 4 planes on orders from 1 residing in a cave in Afghanistan, hit 3 out of 4 of their targets which totally destroyed 3 steel framed buildings (although that has never happened before), inflicted massive damages on 4 other buildings in the WTC which were also essentially destroyed, heavily damaged the Pentagon, murdered over 200 firefighters and police, and over 2000 innocent civilians and completely confounded our multi-trillion dollar defense and intelligence systems.

On the other hand...those who know bad things have been suggested in the past because we felt threatened by the spread of communision (Operation Northwoods) feel that another such operation has been suggested in recent history but this time acted upon. What happened to us on 9/11 could have only been executed by those with access to large amounts of money and many people whose soul had a price. What keeps them quiet you say? Lack of conscience for going along with it in the first place, the threat of prosecution and a twisted sense of some greater good as they cling to an ideology about a New World Order with America taking on the role of new Roman Empire.

All it takes is common sense to figure out what's happening on this planet which has always imitated art or vice versa, in this case...we are living a Lord of the Flies kind of existence. Call it paranoia if you will, I call it self-preservation. I hope you all are still exercising your right to keep and bear arms because the movement which is afoot calling for transparency may uncover a lot of corruption that involves a ton of people who are going to have a lot to lose.

Impeach

2006-06-06T09:37:00.000-04:00

The Constitution provides a remedy for the power being concentrated in the Executive Branch of our tripartite system. Please organize in your area and do what is right. We cannot allow this to continue because it will be to the detriment of our country as well as this planet.

Be It Resolved: You Can Impeach the President

Official State Impeachment Text

Impeachment Text for Cities & Towns

Impeachment Text for County Democratic Committees

Impeachment Text for State Assemblies and/or Legislatures

Jefferson's Manual, Section LIII, 603

You Can Impeach the President

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OFFICIAL IMPEACHMENT TEXT

WHEREAS, Jefferson's Manual section LIII, 603, states that impeachment may be set in motion by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has intentionally misled the Congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war against Iraq, in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 1001 and intentionally conspired with others to defraud the United States in connection with the war against Iraq in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 371; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has admitted to ordering the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American civilians without seeking warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, duly constituted by Congress in 1978, in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has conspired to commit the torture of prisoners in violation of the UN Torture Convention and the Geneva Convention, which under Article VI of the Constitution are part of the "supreme Law of the Land"; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has acted to strip Americans of their constitutional rights by ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to legal counsel, without charge and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the President of a U.S. citizen as an "enemy combatant", all in subversion of law; and

WHEREAS, In all of this George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, subversive of constitutional government to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the State of ___________ and of the United States.

Be it resolved that George W. Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.

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1) This ending is for use by Cities and Towns.

WHEREAS, it is the uniform practice of the US House of Representative to receive petitions or resolutions from primary assemblies of the people;

Be it resolved that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, by such conduct, warrant impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States;

Be it resolved further by the City of _________ , That our senators and representatives in the United States Congress be, and they are hereby, requested to cause to be instituted in the Congress of the United States proper proceedings for the investigation of the activities of the President George W. Bush, to the end that he may be impeached and removed from such office.

Be it resolved further, That the Clerk of the City of _________ be, and is hereby, instructed to certify to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, under the seal of the City of _____________, a copy of this resolution and its adoption by the City of _________, and that this resolution be entered in the United States Congressional Journal. The copies shall be marked with the word "Petition" at the top of the document and contain the authorizing signature of the _________.

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2) This ending is for use by County Democratic Committees.

WHEREAS, Jefferson's Manual section LIII, 603, states that impeachment may be set in motion by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State;

Be it resolved that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, by such conduct, warrant impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States;

Be it resolved further that the _______ County Democratic Committee requests that the State Legislature submit these charges to the U.S. House of Representatives under Jefferson's Manual section LIII, 603 as grounds for impeachment.

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3) This ending is for use by State Legislatures. Please make appropriate changes for your state, which may have an Assembly instead of a House of Representatives.

WHEREAS, Jefferson's Manual section LIII, 603, states that impeachment may be set in motion by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State;

Be it resolved that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, by such conduct, warrant impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States;

Be it resolved further by the House of Representatives of the State of _________ (the senate concurring), That our senators and representatives in the United States Congress be, and they are hereby, requested to cause to be instituted in the Congress of the United States proper proceedings for the investigation of the activities of the President George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, to the end that they may be impeached and removed from such office.

Be it resolved further, That the Secretary of State of the State of ________ be, and is hereby, instructed to certify to each Senator and Representative in the Congress of the United States, and the Clerk of the House of Representatives, under the great seal of the State of _____________, a copy of this resolution and its unanimous adoption by the legislature of the State of _____________, and that this resolution be entered in the United States Congressional Journal. The copies shall be marked with the word "Petition" at the top of the document and contain the authorizing signature of the Secretary of State.

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You Can Impeach the President
By Dan DeWalt

In mid January of this year, in a moment of quixotic zeal, I wrote a five point resolution calling for the impeachment of G W Bush. With 5% of the towns registered voters signing on, it went to the selectboard and was included in the warning for Newfane Town Meeting on March 7.

By the end of Town Meeting day, five towns across Vermont had overwhelmingly adopted this resolution. My phone started ringing within an hour or two, and a day and a half later, I had given more than 30 interviews to media outlets, from FOX and CNN radio to several Boston and local Vermont radio stations, from a Massachusetts ABC-affiliate to Bloomberg News, the Washington Times (snake in the grass), Boston Globe and Reuters.

I soon found out that Vermonters had already been hard at work drafting the “Rutland Resolution," which is an impeachment resolution to be passed by the state legislature, and forces the federal House of Representatives to forward it to the Judiciary Committee. We are continuing our efforts and are making headway, with over half of the state's Democratic County Committees passing it. The state Democratic Committee will be considering this on April 10. Several legislators have expressed a willingness to go along, if not to lead.

I also discovered that all across the country, this call for accountability is being received with welcome and relief. People who have identified themselves as Republicans, evangelicals, many veterans, many elder Americans, contacted me or Newfane to say that they are supporting us and appreciate our speaking out.

Those who support this effort can bring it to their home towns. Whether you have Town Meeting, town council, county supervisors, or any other local political structure, you can petition them to adopt a resolution. Gathering signatures to persuade them may be easier than you would imagine. Support for this president’s actions is very thin. As more revelations dribble out from the mainstream press, more Americans are willing to reconsider their willingness to be unquestionably led by this malignant administration.

Already efforts are underway in California, Hawaii, Indiana, Arizona, Utah, as well as more in VT, just to name some locations where initiatives have sprung up in response to our Town Meeting actions.

If you want to read a concise primer on how to take on an initiative in your town, go here.

Dan DeWalt is a woodworker and selectboard member in the town of Newfane, Vermont, and the author of a successful town resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

Disclaimer

2006-05-29T17:37:00.000-04:00

Since getting a few replies on here as well as links, I feel that I need to state that the views of those in my comment section are entirely those of the poster. I will not be censoring much on here. Pornography or obscenity will not be tolerated, however I can easily tolerate anybody whose views are different from my own, and in fact welcome them to educate me to other possibilities. (or they're welcome to try, anyway! lol)

The Power of Nightmares (BBC)

2006-05-23T18:22:00.000-04:00

The power of nightmares. I really wish people would wake up.

Free Video:

The Power of Nightmares Part 1 <--click
The Power of Nightmares Part 2 <--click
The Power of Nightmares Part 3 <--click

If those downloads don't work, try this site. <--click

Podcast-How indeed did the twin towers collapse?

2006-05-21T23:39:00.000-04:00

Another must see video. How indeed did the
twin towers collapse? ----click

The Middle Eastern Wars PTSD and the War Wounded

2006-05-17T10:36:00.000-04:00

Hi. Have been having a very weird (to say the least) couple of days. I'm in the middle of this worldwide debate about 9/11 and our foreign policy, wars, government incompassion, etc...

While on the homefront, I am separated from my husband of 24 years for the last year. On the marriage side, I feel I am at the point of no return. My husband has been having a difficult time dealing with recently diagnosed PTSD resulting from combat in Vietnam. (Although he is also a Desert Storm vet, his condition was pre-existing when he participated in that conflict. It was undiagnosed) Our marital problems have nothing to do with his PTSD. THAT I can deal with. At any rate, all that is irrelevant to this post

Hubby looks scary, sounds scarier. Not a real big guy, average size. He's Mexican American. Was with the marines in Vietnam, 1st MAW 13/13 and then 18/18. Got to Vietnam in late 1969 and stayed to the spring of 1971. I hope I don't have to tell anybody that he probably saw some pretty ugly shit during this time.

Back to now. He left from where he was staying about a month ago to enter this program. He and I have been having a tough time, plus the way the world is, he's pretty messed up. So he's in the middle of this program. He's actually a pretty compassionate person under the surface. He's a teddy bear. When he's angry or feels threatened, he turns into something else. He does it calmly though. He tells people what he can do and how he could easily do it to them. His voice is low...almost sinister. His eyes reveal an emptiness that makes those who are close enough to look inside afraid that this soulless creature may indeed be capable of such atrocities. (I know the man, he probably is capable, but is intelligent enough to know that in this case, there would be consequences)

First week in the program, he meets everybody, sizes them up as anyone would do in his position as "the new guy," and concludes afterwards that he's dealing with one or two who have judged him by his skin color. (think that immigration issue has anything to do with it? i dunno...plain old racism, if you ask me...but that's for another topic) As it were, they called a meeting to decide if my husband should be allowed to continue in the program. The psychiatrist got rattled and turned him out.

Is this any way to treat our war wounded? I realize that you are not getting the full picture, but trust me...from this end, as I know this person better than his own mother does, it was unfair of them not to let him continue. He knows stuff. He can help people. (he's been employed in the past as a counselor) All he wanted when he went there was a place to be with people like him who understand what he's going through. A place to put his weary head. Instead he encountered ignorance, prejudice and fear. God bless America.

He said there were zero vets from the middle eastern wars participating in the program. He said they do not segregate them, but there were none there while he's been there for the last month or so. Where are these guys? How are they doing? Do any of you know any? I hope they're ok...that's all I wanted to say.

A new must see video

2006-05-16T04:45:00.000-04:00

Everybody's gotta learn sometime....

Thinking about him

2006-05-05T01:25:00.000-04:00

I wrote this poem today for my husband. He's doing a 12 week PTSD cohort at a VA hospital. I was feeling a little sad about him because we've been having some deep talks since he's been there. I wanted to post it to my online diary here...

War is never the answer. It distorts the character of good men and women who have to fight. Love will set us free. It will set the world free one day. This I have to believe.

Boystown Vietnam Vet
Born inner city bangin' to stay alive

Hopeful turn got Flanagan's big dream

Made the most of it and a life was foreseen

Drafted--his will stronger than steel

Brought back distrust was unable to feel

Entered lives of those who wanted only love

Was wrong of them to believe he ever could

Babies abandoned, never have to explain

Then she came who saw in him

a goodness distorted by pain and welcomed to life

The beautiful soul of this put-upon man

Loved him more than any could--saw in him all of his good

But he couldn't love her never no and

Finally she said, "Please go"

He knew that it was time--she and the kids would be just fine

Still a deep sadness encompassed both

And the man just sighed and left in search

of the one he's lost--Himself.

Rummy, you kooky nut, you!

2006-05-04T03:47:00.000-04:00

A little humor is called for during these trying times...even if it's cynical.
Rummy, ya nut!
Actual quotes by our own incomparable Secretary of Defense. My literary license displayed in red. Source: Wikipedia!

Throughout the war on terror as of 2006, Rumsfeld has often been accused of giving rhetorical answers to serious questions.

"We take the world like you find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It's a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood that in many -- over a period of time has opined from time to time that they'd prefer it not be there and they'd like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has arranged itself so it hasn't been put in the sea." …and now they possess the capability to put a bunch of other people in the sea at their discretion. What's so bad about that?

"Our task, your task... is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction." Unless we're talking about Cheney...then we just laugh.

"Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often." Like when they asked me what happened to the missing defense budget trillions.

"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. …to be ashamed of."

"Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is "bold, exciting, innovative, and new." There are many ideas that are "bold, exciting, innovative and new," but also foolish." Like executing a new Pearl Harbor, perpetuating a largely terrorist myth and attempting global control, but to us boys at PNAC; gold, baby!

Cluster bombs are being used on frontline al Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them is why we're using them, to be perfectly blunt." BTW, where is the frontline in these wars, just out of curiosity?

"I'm hopeful that some will surrender. I suspect some won't, and I suspect the result from that will be that the opposition forces will kill them." Even if they happen to be just a family, mom, dad, 4 or 5 kids piled in the backseat, racing home to beat curfew and dad guns it through a checkpoint, ignores orders to stop and gets his head blown off because something snaps inside of his mind before they mercifully relieve him of his brain while simultaneously distorting forever the characters of good men in the soldier(s) who pulled the trigger. You can't beat that with a stick.

"I think we ought to have a new rule: You can ask two questions, and then we can pick the one we want to answer." Better yet, you don’t ask the questions and we just give you all the answers.

"Charlie, the answer to the question "Is he alive or dead" – the answer is yes, he is alive or dead (laughter)." (referring to bin Laden) “Is he good or bad?” Yes, he is good or bad. “Is he real or fictional?” You saw the videotapes! You heard the audios, those don’t lie!

"I mean, let's face it. They weren't exactly baking cookies in those caves." (in a response to why U.S. bombers killed people hiding in caves) We actually think they were involved in clandestine activities related to a hostile crème brulee takeover aimed at the coffee house empire.

"You go to war with the army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." But they’ll do in a pinch, just like the rigged equipment we’re forcing them all to use. A trillion dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to, yanno?

"Well, Dick, calibrate me, but the first thing I'd say is I don't believe you have the war plan -- (laughter) -- a fact which does not make me unhappy (laughter)." It is I, oh portly comic relief, who commands the evil empire, lest ye forget.

"Sometimes the truth is so precious, it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." from Winston Churchill Everything is done on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know.

"I think what you'll find, I think what you'll find is, whatever it is we do substantively, there will be near-perfect clarity as to what it is. And it will be known, and it will be known to the Congress, and it will be known to you, probably before we decide it, but it will be known." (February 28, 2003) All of you just won’t realize you know what you know until you know it’s too late; you know, thank father Satan.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know." (February 12, 2002) HUH?

"Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won't see. And life goes on." (October 12, 2001) At least that’s what we’re banking on, and so far it’s all going perfectly according to plan.

"Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." (September 11, 2001) Pin this one on Iraq and make it stick. Use more blood if you have to.

"Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography! A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse for a relatively modest cost!" (June 9, 2001) Dayum…he sounds like one of the ineffectual debaters one comes up against in forums with tomatoes in their name.

"Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think, 'What in the world am I doing here?' It's a big surprise." (May 16, 2001) Who would have thought that I would have the power to decide who lives and dies? It’s exhilarating, especially if you torture them before finishing them off. That really gets my adrenaline pumping! It's better than sex!

"If you waited until you could do everything before you did anything, you probably would end up doing nothing." …and that’s why sometimes we come off as looking a little incompetent, but really…we are only human after all. (if you squint in just the right light, you can make out what appear to be repressed horns...strange bumps on his forehead)

Before long, I suspect that those responsible for these acts will encounter British steel. Their kind of steel has an uncommon strength. It does not bend or break." (a response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings) Unlike the WTC towers’ steel and concrete construction which can get pulverized and melted into portable pieces for quick and easy elimination of evidence…err dangerous debris due to raging inferno type fires.

"Stuff happens."

(April 2003, commenting on the looting, rioting and general mayhem that followed the fall of Baghdad) …and Jesus doesn’t live here.

"...or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon" (a possible slip up referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks [28]) Shot down, you know…the passengers shot down the terrorists’ plans to fly that plane into the Capitol Building…those people are the true heroes of the day. Never forget what happened to Flight 93 on 9/11. (Hey, what did happen)

(speaking about disorder in Iraq, April 2003) "It's untidy, and freedom's untidy. Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things." Guardian Unlimited, April 12, 2003 …and they’re free to accept our total control over their own destinies and natural resources and certainly free to lend us their undying gratitude for it.

(speaking about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction) "There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist." I guess that depends on the meaning of exist and absence and it.

During a December 8, 2004, town-hall meeting with U.S. troops at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, Rumsfeld responded to a soldier's comments about inferior military equipment by saying "you go to war with the army you have", a comment some characterized as needlessly cold. Rumsfeld's full answer:

I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they are being – the Army is – I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. (you do know we control the laws of physics too, right?) It isn't a matter of money. (I got trillions to play with) It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. (So basically, you weren’t all that cool, but the plans were in motion and we can deal with collateral damage, no problem) Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. (Because dammit…it is just so difficult to come off the bucks. I know…I know…but you’ve never had control of THIS MUCH MONEY, so don’t judge.)

I can assure you that General Pete Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip. It's interesting, I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. (So quit your damned whining and stop acting so all-important, you ain’t sh*t.) And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. (I know this for a fact, me and Dickie boy used to blow them up for fun. Once, we put a monkey in the driver’s seat beforehand. You should have seen little Georgie laugh that day) And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on. We know we got money to burn, and anyway, you wouldn't understand unless you had control of this much money!

And General Whitcomb, is there anything you'd want to add to that? (I think he said something like this, “No, your eminence, I am not worthy.")

It's hopeless

2006-05-02T16:55:00.000-04:00

My adventures in blogging and arguing 9/11 government complicity have come full circle. I now realize that we're in too deep, that there's too many cointelpro and just mindless sheep insurgents who have invaded the truth movement putting forth violent opposition, implausible alternate theories, ridiculing people on forums, on blogs, on websites devoted to truth that the light will never reach the masses. We are doomed to the dark and uncertainty of what it all means.

I have a few suggestions though. Love your family. You don't know when something bad is going to take them from you. Love yourself. If you've found this blog, you are obviously a truth-seeker and you are one of the good ones deserving of love and compassion.

Our country is on a path to destruction. If you have the ways and means to get out, do it. There's not a republic left to defend.

This country has been waging nuclear war since 1991. Depleted uranium dropped in the Middle East has resulted in a slow poisoning of the people there and our own troops who are being forced to fight this war in the interest of the Bush-connected Carlyle Group and the Cheney-connected Halliburton. There is approximately 3 trillion dollars missing from the defense budget already, so they definitely have the resources to keep their fight going much longer than any of us little people can only dream of.

We have been manipulated, maligned, dismissed and discouraged. They won before most of us even got into the game. They mean to destroy over half the world's population in the selfish interest of the power elite and are well on their way in the Middle East.

Today, FOX news has gone on a new rant about South American socialism being a threat to our economic interests and are forwarding possible military action there. Iran is definitely in the crosshairs and with 3/4 of the world angry and suspicious of our intentions this has made us a target for global action against the United States that will bring about the final showdown. Maybe these are end-times. Nowhere in history have we been so close to total annihilation than now

So, in the interest of sanity, goodwill and just plain common sense, give up and concentrate on those things most important, the love of family, the sanctity of a life lived well and your own self-preservation. We have lost and will never possess the tools it would take to save the planet let alone our own little place in it. Concede, it's not worth it. Let the end of days begin...hang on precious, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

It appears that I am far from being alone

2006-04-29T18:12:00.000-04:00

Universal Studios has set up a forum to discuss "United 93" and it appears to be turning into a battleground for the truth movement. It made my day to read some of the thoughful, provocative posts being left by those of us who merely want to let the light of day shine on truth.

What if everything is a lie?

2006-04-28T08:59:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration lies. We know that. We've witnessed countless lies. Ask me for sources, I'll back that statement up, if I have to. I don't think I have to. We all know he lies. Some excuse the lies and believe Bush is working for a greater good. I've seen no proof of this.

We're in the Middle East in a power-grab for oil. They've never admitted this, but it is an obvious truth. Since Bush took office, oil prices have gone through the roof. This makes the Bush family and its Texas cronies very happy.

What if everything is a lie? I ask this because I truly believe that we are being governed by lies.

What if 9/11 is the biggest lie? What if terrorism is largely myth? What if everybody they've convicted for acts of terrorism are mostly innocent? Terrorism seems to be inherent human nature. We all terrorize each other. From sibling rivalry to worker back-stabbing, to political bombings...it's all terrorism.

Now, what if the Bush administration has cultivated this human trait and turned it into a bigger threat than ever? What if it is they who are the biggest terrorists ever to occupy this planet? Black ops perpetrated by our own intelligence is a known fact. People die in the interest of preserving a so-called national security. There is a mountain of evidence that suggests our intelligence factions are corrupted beyond belief. You can't expect people to do the things they are asked to do and still be upright, moral, righteous folks.

What if 9/11 was an inside job? Clearly it is, yet people will still vehemently deny it. In your heart, you know. In your head you think it's for our own good. Good has nothing to do with it. Insist that independent investigations are undertaken to get to the bottom of these lies. Innocents are being scapegoated in this perpetual, immoral, illegal war on terror. 9/11 got us to this point. We can get us out. Join me in asking for a world tribunal to come to our rescue. The questions of what happened on 9/11 must be answered.

If this country really had decent, good intentions, we would not find ourselves in the Middle East. If our leaders were truly the religious, moral people they claim to be, we would be working for the planet's greater good and not the Carlyle Group or Halliburton's. We would be working to disarm ourselves instead of worrying about what new horrors we can unleash on the world in a nuclear strike against Iran and anybody who would stand in the way.

It boggles the mind to consider that we, as an intelligent, innovative species cannot figure out how to solve our common problems without going to war and killing each other. Stupidity runs rampant and it's frustrating to those of us who possess a modicum of rational thought.

PINK FLOYD

"Us And Them"

Us and Them

And after all we're only ordinary men

Me, and you

God only knows it's not what we would choose to do

Forward he cried from the rear

and the front rank died

And the General sat, as the lines on the map

moved from side to side

Black and Blue

And who knows which is which and who is who

Up and Down

And in the end it's only round and round and round

Haven't you heard it's a battle of words

the poster bearer cried

Listen son, said the man with the gun

There's room for you inside

Down and Out

It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about

With, without

And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about

Get out of the way, it's a busy day

And I've got things on my mind

For want of the price of tea and a slice

The old man died

Evidence of thermite charges set in WTC

2006-04-27T05:56:00.000-04:00

There is photographic and video evidence of the presence of thermite which cut the steel supports in the WTC after it was hit by an airplane. If we were to buy the official story, that the steel "melted" or "softened" to an unstable degree which contributed to the destruction, how can they explain this photo? The steel looks cut, not melted or softened as the official story claims. See more about thermite as the probable cause of the collapses of the buildings at WTC on 9/11 here at this link.

An exerpt from the linked article:

"In this photo, for example, the column directly above the fireman's helmet shows that it was cut with thermite. There is a substantial amount of hardened molten iron which can be seen on both the inside and outside of the box column. This is precisely what one would expect to find on a column which had been cut with thermite."

Video evidence showing unusual burning, molten steel pouring from the tower just before the collapse. It's a disturbing scene which includes the reaction people had after witnessing the first tower collapse. Their emotional reactions were caputured on the audio portion of this video. Exercise caution when choosing to view this evidence.

Osama bin Laden is dead

2006-04-27T02:17:00.000-04:00

Experts say Osama bin Laden is dead. Why would anybody want to make us believe otherwise? To forward a selfish agenda which benefits only a few arrogant, self-serving, gratuitous, treasonous, un-American, criminals otherwise known as the Bush regime. To keep us driven by an irrational fear aimed at a dead man who has been officially blamed for the worst terrorist strike ever to reach our shores.

I'm not done talking about this. Not by a long-shot. I have had it up to my neck with all the so-called debate surrounding this issue. Somebody needs to come on here and give me a piece of their mind about why they support the crimes of this administration. I have been tearing up forums dedicated to 9/11 truth for days. There are quite a few available. Google 9/11 truth forums and you too can join in the debate. Well anyway, you can expose yourself to the violent opposition that comes with the territory of being informed.

An example of one of my posts left on an internet forum

Impeachment is too good for them

Nobody addressed my post...I'm guessing you have already written me off as a conspiracy theorist nut. Fair enough, not like I haven't been getting it all over the net. Seems like that's all anybody's ever got. Insults or avoidance. Never any rational, informed debate. The longer it's ignored, the more research is being done every day that supports the so-called conspiracy theory that suggests elements within our own government are involved in a possible LIHOP (let it happen on purpose) or MIHOP (make it happen on purpose) or a combination of both. When a crime is committed, police look for the most plausible explanation for what occurred. Do you believe that 3 steel frame buildings came down in one day on their own? Would you be inclined to believe the destruction of the WTC was helped along if you knew that Marvin Bush and various Bush cousins were involved in security for the WTC complex on 9/11 and before? This same Marvin Bush was head of security for Dulles (where AA flight 77 took off from) and United Airlines on 9/11. Does that make a bit of difference? Or do you choose to remain in the dark?

Did you believe your own eyes when you saw it live and in color on television or was it like a horrible nightmare you couldn't wake from?

The most implausible theory put forward is the one the 9/11 Whitewash Commission left us with. Basically, they pretty much told us what they believe could have happened, what our gross failures were and what we needed to do about it. So what happened? Who was disciplined in this huge travesty that was allowed to happen through supposed incompetence? Wasn't it ironic that 19 guys with boxcutters could confound all our trillion dollar defense and hit 3 out of 4 targets, decimating the financial district in NYC and also hitting the Pentagon arguably the most highly defended building in the world even after they had known for over an hour that planes had been hijacked on orders from a caveman in Afghanistan?

Popular Mechanics tried to forward the official story with a 50 million to one explanation written by Benjamin Chertoff, cousin to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

If we don't start opening our eyes to the dangerous tyrants who occupy the White House, we are finding ourselves closer to a nuclear threat than at any other time in our history...and it would be at the hands of our own government. They did it once and are getting away with it. They are planning to do it again, only this time it might be worse. I live blocks from where the college world series is played. It's scary to be near a national type venue like that. Call that paranoid, I call it being aware. I call it survival instincts kickin in. Keep your eyes open. When it happens again, and it will if we continue to ignore facts, don't let them get away with it.

In the words of an illiterate American president: "There's an old saying in Tennessee —I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Sorry for the length of this post...9/11 inspires some passionate feelings in me. I tend towards being long-winded and emotional. I guess motherly instincts and wanting to protect my family has something to do with it. Please, let's don't ever get fooled again.

Scientific panel investigating 9/11

2006-04-26T12:20:00.000-04:00

This is from a page at physics911.net This is one of the best sites available for fact-finding and questions answered. Please consider the unthinkable. Our government is probably complicit in what happened to us on 9/11. If we continue to let them get away with it, nothing will stop them from doing it again. When it happens again, and it will, don't be fooled, take action and bring the criminals to justice. It's the right thing to do. My comments are in red, below.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1. How could the attacks be faked in such a massive operation? Surely one of the hundreds of people involved would step forward and declare what they know to the media.
Answer: Three major elements in the operational security of the September 11 Black Op would not be guessed by the average citizen, this amounting to a fourth element.
First, most of the participants in the operation had no idea they were participating in it. Instead, they thought they were involved in a war game scheduled for that day (coincidence number 123). For example several fighter wings had been flown out of the area as part of the games, providing scant air cover in the event. Later, when 911 itself resulted in the call down of all commercial aircraft, this would have made it possible to land three of the hijacked flights in the confusion, while substitute aircraft took over. Thus, 911 acted as its own cover, in effect, as well.
Second, many of the key participants in the operation already belonged to intelligence agencies from one of the participating countries, principally (at a guess) the CIA, MI6, and Mossad. All three agencies are known to have black ops and Mossad, in particular, has a very long history in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD, as it is known in the trade. (This branch of special operations has little to do with “disposal” and much to do with “explosives.”) No intelligence officer is likely to blow the cover on an operation to which he/she is fully committed. Even if an intel type decided to tell all, he or she would be scheduled for immediate “extreme prejudice” treatment, not to mention the barrier he or she would face in the next paragraph.
Third, as our own experience with the media suggests, stories that directly contradict the spin are unwelcome, to say the least, even from undercover agents. The extremely sensitive nature of the story would trigger a series of consultations up the chain of ownership to the top, from which a flat “no” would be issued. The mere possibility of Israel being involved in such a story would send owners into a panic. It is a matter of public record that all five principal owners are committed zionists for whom Israel can do no wrong. (See the MEDIA tab at the top of our index page for further information.)

Question 2. The mere possibility that the attacks were faked just sounds preposterous to me. Who could believe such a thing?
Answer: The true nature of 911 could be called “the secret that keeps itself.” It had predecessors in both American and middle eastern history in which the true perpetrators of “terrorist” acts had already been painted as victims, in effect, by the media. From the Gulf of Tonkin incident which triggered the Vietnam War back to the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1945 which enabled the creation of the the state of Israel, the attack of 911 is hardly an isolated example. Moreover, the Operation Northwoods plan (now public under the FOIA) called for airliners to be crashed into public buildings to provide an excuse for the invasion of Cuba.

Question 3. What benefit would the perpetrators of the 911 attacks, the ones you claim are most probably behind them, get from such an operation?
Answer: In a nutshell, American and British Oil interests would benefit hugely from the resulting invasions of Afghanistan, namely in a pipeline corridor from the central Asian oil fields to the existing middle eastern pipeline network, including new terminal facilities at Haifa. The Iraqi oil fields are the main prize, however. They are likely to remain in American hands for the foreseeable future. The ultimate profits from such operations are enormous and swell the coffers of companies owned by the Bush (Carlyle Group and Zapata Oil) and Cheney (Halliburton) Families, not to mention Unocal and other oil giants. There would be additional benefits to the arms industry in the manufacture of arms and war materiel to accommodate the new conflict.
In addition, a global master plan for the conquest of the Middle East had already been worked out by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) drawn up by the neocon element in Washington. The plan even called for a “new Pearl Harbor” as the trigger that would set it in motion.
Finally, Israel would get a green light for a new wave of oppression in Gaza and the West Bank. World opinion would not turn against draconian new projects such as “The Wall,” if neighboring Islamic Countries (including Palestine) were viewed generally as a source of terrorism. There appears to be a long-term plan in effect, one that passes from government to government in Israel. The plan calls for a “divide and conquer” strategy by which all of Palestine will eventually become part of Israel.

Question 4. If the attacks of September 11 were faked, what about the long string of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings attributed to Al Qaeda?
Answer: Al Qaeda is almost certainly a long-term black operation that began shortly after the end of close cooperation between Ousama Bin Laden and the Mujahadeen with the United States in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Bin Laden, who is known to have suffered from terminal kidney disease, was visited by the CIA section chief in a hospital in Dubai in mid-2001. He survived just long enough after 911 to issue a statement that the attacks were not his work or the work of any Muslim. The denial appeared in a Pakistani newspaper, but was ignored by western news sources. In the words of one of a Panel member from the intel community, “Al Qaeda is us.”
In view of the fact that the same pattern of anomalous circumstances surrounds both previous and subsequent attacks attributed to Al Qaeda (see OTHER ATTACKS - this website), Al Qaeda appears to serve as a kind of universal boogeyman to herd frightened western legislators into a neo-fascist political program that will, in the long run, result in dictatorial powers concentrated in the hands of a small cadre in Washington.

Question 5. If you people are right, why aren't you all dead by now?
Answer: If you're asking why we haven't been "taken care of" by the true perpetrators, the answer is twofold. a) There are far too many of us to be "taken care of" without raising more suspicion than the perpetrators could handle. There are now literally hundreds of 911-skeptical websites, thousands of people working on the issue, and millions of people who have reached the same degree of skepticism or suspicion. (b) We assume that the perpetrators have enough control/influence over the mainstream media to keep 911 issues off the page and off the screen. (See the answer to Question 1.) Thus, they may not be particularly worried about our efforts - so far.
If they are worried, they will launch (or already have launched) a disinformation campaign. This would consist of one or more elements in an internet setting of articles and websites: Limited Hangout (a partial analysis, along with blame placed on the military-industrial complex, for example); Well-poisoning (the appearance of an investigative effort accompanied by stories or ads that refer to UFOs, mental telepathy, or what have you); Blackballing (a mixture of name-calling and misdirected analysis that leaves the impression that legitimate websites are either run by "conspiracy nuts" or are themselves engaged in a disinformation campaign run by terrorists); Denial of Evidence (a specific piece of 9/11 evidence is analyzed with seeming care - but for the omission of one or two crucial elements. The analysis may conclude that a particular video or photo or document was faked, unreliable, or in some other way unacceptable as evidence.)
The fact that websites with some of these qualities already exist (not a large percentage) creates problems with interpretation; there would be no easy way to distinguish such a website mounted by a trained psyops professional from one designed by a well-meaning but off-track investigator.
There are many sites promoting implausible theories...even moreso than the official one. Keep to the basic facts. No steel frame building has ever collapsed due to fire. There is credible photographic and video evidence suggesting that cutting charges of thermite were placed in the World Trade Center. The evidence was carted off as quickly as possible. This is not a joke. We are headed toward the same fate as Nazi germany. This is what happens when evil is given a foothold. It is long past time to develop clean alternative energy resources. If just 10% of what we spend on defense is put into this research, imagine the possibilities.

Question 6. Are you saying the Jews are behind 911?
Answer: Certainly not. Although Israel is ostensibly a Jewish state, its actions in the middle east are in direct conflict with Jewish Law, ethics and morality. The European (Khazarite) Jews may be described as double victims, suffering not only from centuries of persecution after the fall of Muslim Spain, but from the deceptive practices adopted by the Zionist planners responsible for Israel. Myths such as “a land without people for a people without land” (both questionable propositions) misled thousands of settlers in the Jewish proto-state, followed by millions later.
As a general rule, zionist organizations in the west have only one tool with which to counter revelations of the myth-building exercise. Whoever makes such claims is labeled an “anti-semite,” a peculiarly ironic charge under the circumstances.
This event has many different governments who are complicit. The tenets of these governments concerning world problems exacerbate the problems. Their irrational attempt at conserving oil for their own people's needs is preposterous and benefits only those holding oil stock. Prices have shot up astronomically at the gas pumps and the rich just keep getting richer. The Israel zionist connection is understandable given the record they have amassed in their own heavy-handed policies in the Middle East. They needed to garner military support by forcing our hand to action against supposed enemies who are centered in the region. Gotta ask yourself, who are the real enemies?

Question 7 . What can the average citizen do about the situation revealed on your website, as well as the multitude of other sources?
Answer: Although some people may come up with more creative approaches to the publicity problem, we strongly suggest that you refer your friends and acquaintances to this and similar websites. As well, you could:
1. Place an inexpensive ad in your local paper suggesting that the reader visit the website of the (printed) URL.
2. Write a brief letter to your elected federal representative, urging him or her to think twice about 911 and to visit an appropriate website. (If you have printed material or a video on the subject, send it.)
3. Print up some cards outlining the problem and leave them in public places.
4. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, briefly stating the questions raised by the publicly available evidence left in the wake of 911, being sure to provide a URL.
5. Send financial support to the 911-oriented websites that request it. (See our list under LINKS, for example.) These websites ask for money to pay for research, also some are attempting to purchase full page ads in every newspaper in America. This information must be allowed to see the light of day. The more we're made aware, the less we are inclined to complacency. Keep your eyes and ears open because something huge is in the works. Suitcase bombs have been in the news, imagine one going off in a crowded stadium. These dirty bombs would buy our government the support it needs from the uneducated for a tactical nuclear assault on Iran. This must not be allowed to happen!
6. Start your own website, link to credible sources, blog about your feelings, suspicions, how you felt on 9/11. How it has affected your life. What you think about the problems we all face on this planet...etc.
Don’t be shy!

Warning: Read my post before clicking this link

2006-04-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

A video made on 9/11/2001 inside the World Trade Center.

This video may upset people watching it. It shows damage to the lobby of the first tower hit. How does the lobby get damaged to this degree? Thankfully, this video does not show the injured, although you can hear their cries. You can also hear the sickening sound a body makes when it hits the ground after deciding to jump from one of the tallest structures in the world rather than face death by fire. Take precautions with sensitive people or children who might be closeby before you decide to watch this scene. I'm not even sure what I saw or heard in this video. Sounded like explosions.

I realize that all the available information about 9/11 is gut-wrenching, unbelievable, fantastic hollywood-sounding surreality but it has to be considered by rational, decent people who may have been duped by their own government. I don't know about the rest of you, but this has me totally freaked out. To imagine that our own government might be complicit in what happened to us on 9/11 is consuming my life. Help me spread the word so that I can begin to rest easy. The time for healing is long past. Move to action, today!

Consider taking a look at the ten-page 9/11 timeline that is posted on my blog. Go to the links in the post. Read for yourself. Educate yourself and spread the word.

Free video: Must See, important information

2006-04-23T11:33:00.000-04:00

Watch Alex Jones' video free on google. He is trying so hard to get out the word and does such a good job of backing up his claims that it is hard to ignore what he perceives to be the truth. It becomes obvious early on. It's shocking and will shake you up. Common decency will motivate you to move to action. The CIA and the military have been trying to work within their own tenets and have leaked information through declassifying government documents to warn us what is happening. We must take action now. Congress cannot afford to unleash this mad dog. There is a remedy to what is happening. It is called, IMPEACHMENT. The time is now, before the PEOPLE take action. This will be a dangerous endeavor. Congress holds all the cards at this point. It's either them or us. Please, I implore our representatives, do the right thing!

In his opening statement before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Richard Clarke told relatives of victims in the audience: “Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you.”

“We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter, because we failed,” he added.

We’ve all failed. We’ve failed as a nation. We’ve had our eyes closed for too many years. Pearl Harbor may have been the start…heck, maybe this goes all the way back to our own American Revolution. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Cliché but apropos, no?

Free video

Alex Jones so believes in what he is doing. You should take the time to watch this video being made available through google video. The only way to stop this dangerous policy is through education. Yes, it's unthinkable, but for our own safety it's imperative that we begin considering the probability of what is happening to this country and how we got here. We have to take this country back before the government takes over the world in what they perceive to be our best interest. Read that their best interest.

The people of this country have been asleep for far too long. Please write to your elected representatives and demand that investigations be reopened into 9-11. Suggest that a world tribunal be called to thoroughly vet the remaining questions. We have to face the sins of those who are mistaken in what is good for us.

Oil, while an important resource, does not have to be our only source of energy. The money being spent to wage these wars is lining the pockets of the power elite. The corruption is mind-boggling. Imagine for a moment what remarkable things could be accomplished with these hundreds of billions of dollars.

Humans are an ever-evolving species. Through invention, people are capable of wondrous innovations. Why are we not taking this money and developing clean alternatives to oil? Hydrogen, the most abundant resource available sounds promising.

This free video produced by Alex Jones is a shocking expose which will help you understand exactly what is going on in the world we will be leaving our children. Done in easy to understand, straightforward language, it will explain to you how we find ourselves in this situation. Jones is a patriot of the first order. What he is doing is extremely dangerous. What I am doing is probably dangerous. Most shocking to me is that I am a nobody who has shifted her fears from a terrorist myth to a horrible reality and apparently, I am a threat to the republic. Why else would a person from the communications squadron at stratcom want to call me on my verizon cell phone? Excuse me, I think that immoral wars in a surreal game of RISK is a bigger threat to this republic.

It's time to figure out a different direction to take humanity in our quest to solve the problems that threaten this entire planet. We're all in this together. Are we, as a miniscule, insignificant dot in a never-ending, expanding universe so ignorant that we can‘t figure out after all these millions of years how to manage our own little eco-system?

Dissent within the CIA

2006-04-23T10:17:00.000-04:00

CIA leaker fired

excerpt: If in fact Ms. McCarthy was the leaker, Richard J. Kerr, a former C.I.A. deputy director, said, "I have no idea what her motive was, but there is a lot of dissension within the agency, and it seems to be a rather unhappy place." Mr. Kerr called Ms. McCarthy "quite a good, substantive person on the issues I dealt with her on."
Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency's Latin America section, said, "It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb."

Dissent within the military, the CIA and all over the country. People are recognizing this administration for what they are. Can we afford to let this go on? Why isn't Congress doing something to stop this agressive, self-serving, secretive, immoral group which has taken over our country?

It's surreal to witness the changes that are happening. Devastatingly sad when you think about it. Another opinion article discussing CIA dissent.

I'm afraid I'm losing it. I want to go back to a normal life but can't get this out of my mind. I function day to day because I have to, but I'm mostly preoccupied and fun things are increasingly ceasing to be fun.

The Revolt of the Generals

2006-04-22T14:20:00.000-04:00

Below is an article I read in the latest TIME magazine. It tells of an unprecedented parade of retired military generals critical of their civilian boss, Donald Rumsfeld.

Read between the lines.

Rumsfeld is one of the main architects of PNAC. In today's military, it's Rumsfeld's way or the highway. Rumsfeld has also recently been the subject of increasing credible reports suggesting a major role in the torture policy of the Bush administration. Who are these madmen of PNAC? Look for yourself. Read their website.

Be sure to read between the lines.

Are you ready to exert our power to control the resources of the world? Is it our place to exact our strength on what we judge to be weak? Is it our destiny to be the leaders of the One World Order? Are our leaders the best kind of people to see that the world is run in orderly fashion? Is this a battle of Gods? What is the driving force behind all of this military entanglement?

In the end, one must conclude that our planet will never survive as long as there are people who believe that they are better than others. Influential, self-serving folks who honestly believe they know what's best because they cling to the opinion that some inhabitants of this planet are undeserving of controlling their own destinies. It's pretty sad to consider that there are still those who believe that everybody holds a place in a pecking order. Putting some above others, instead of taking a more compassionate approach through the use of diplomacy and common decency is just plain wrong.

Of course there are people in the world who could use help. We all need to find the answers to what's best. Too bad that the only recourse seems to be a small group of people in Washington D.C. who have put themselves at the top to make these decisions. Unfortunately, their way seems to be an indifferent, hubristic, gratuitous set of tenets that undermines any attempt at genuine compassionate response to world problems.

Sunday, Apr. 16, 2006

The Revolt of the Generals

Here are the complaints against Rumsfeld from a growing list of military chiefs. Guess what Bush thinks

By MICHAEL DUFFY

Army Major General John Batiste sounded like a big fan of Donald Rumsfeld's when the Pentagon chief dropped by the 1st Infantry Division in Tikrit on Christmas Eve 2004. "This is a man with the courage and the conviction to win the war on terrorism," Batiste told a gathering of 250 G.I.s.

But Batiste's true feelings were a little more complex than he was letting on. After joining a growing chorus of retired generals last week calling on Rumsfeld to resign, Batiste told TIME that he was actually seething as the Defense chief came to call. "When I introduce the Secretary of Defense to my troops, I'm going to be a loyal subordinate," he said. "But it was boiling inside me. Every time I looked at him, I was thinking about ... that s_____ war plan, I was thinking about Abu Ghraib, and I was thinking about the challenges I had every day trying to rebuild the Iraqi military that he disbanded."

Batiste, it turns out, wasn't the only one holding his fire. Over the past several weeks, the extent of the military's unhappiness with Rumsfeld has exploded into what is already being called the Revolt of the Generals. Half a dozen retired generals have used newspaper opinion pages--and in the case of Lieut. General Greg Newbold, TIME magazine (see TIME.com)--to break months of silence and call for Rumsfeld's head. That in turn has rekindled the debate about whether the Iraqi invasion was ill-conceived in the first place, and, if so, who is to blame. President George W. Bush issued a defiant defense of his Pentagon boss--if not the larger enterprise itself--from Camp David, where he went to spend Easter: "Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation." General Richard Myers, the recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General Tommy Franks, the main architect of the Afghanistan and Iraq interventions, also quickly leaped to Rumsfeld's defense.

In Washington such high praise from the President is sometimes the prelude to an execution. And behind the scenes, there are indications that the moment for a shuffle could be approaching, says a former White House official who has worked with Rumsfeld. "There are people in the building who would like to see 'peace with honor,'" the official told TIME, dusting off a reference to the 1968 campaign theme that helped elect Richard Nixon. But a senior White House official insisted that Bush would not be pushed into removing the Pentagon boss. "No one has ever mentioned a timeline for his tenure," he said.

Open revolts by the top military brass against their civilian minders are rare but not unprecedented. General MacArthur objected to Harry Truman's handling of the Korean War and was fired in 1951. The Air Force didn't like the way Lyndon Johnson handpicked bombing targets during the Vietnam War. And Bill Clinton had to back down after he ordered the Pentagon to openly admit homosexuals in 1993 by settling on the narrower "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

But what distinguishes the latest rebellion is that the retired generals are taking on their old boss not over policy or budgets but the operation of an ongoing war. And it is a message that will probably be heard more deeply by voters than the usual criticism from Capitol Hill or editorial boards, particularly because the generals are making essentially the same argument: Rumsfeld was wrong to disband the Iraqi military, has ignored the advice of people with far more battlefield experience and has shown too little concern about the abuses of Iraqi prisoners. The generals also argue that Rumsfeld insisted on too small a force for the invasion, abandoning the doctrine championed by former Secretary of State and four-star general Colin Powell in 1991 after the Gulf War to attack rarely and then only with overwhelming force. Rumsfeld wanted to prove the Powell Doctrine obsolete. Instead, he has probably guaranteed that it will be followed for years.

Rest of story continued in comments section.

Are websites like these useless?

2006-04-22T12:20:00.000-04:00

The post below was left on a forum that has a thread questioning 9/11. Someone had posted that this type of activism is useless in getting at answers. This was my reply to that person:

useless...maybe....
April 21 2006, 7:54 PM

Could also say that as long as the dialogue is allowed to persist, it can't be forgotten and those of us with questions will never be complacent when it comes to trust in government. National security becomes very iffy.

When the discussion is not allowed to happen, as in censoring public outlets for debate, the questions keep coming and then even more get raised.

See, I haven't participated in a lot of this discourse over the years. Just the usual passing observations that it was indeed a strange day. In looking for an outlet to debate the anomalies in this resurgence of interest I've come up against violent opposition and brick walls.

Yet, every day, new people like me begin to think the unthinkable. We crave education about 9/11. We want our questions answered. 9/11 is the lynchpin in the whole PNAC (Project for a New American Century) imperial machine. Look it up...be sure to check the members list. Read their mission statement. It's ridiculous, arrogant and insanely dangerous to the whole planet.

If muslim terrorists executed all that damage all by themselves, ALLAH must be with them. In that case, maybe we better start looking into why the gods are angry. If our government did it, (more plausible explanation) then those responsible should stand trial. Let the people decide what is in their best interest. Using our military in a big fight over oil which inevitably makes the rich Bush cabal even richer, leaves me cold. Our VP pulled in 8 mil. last year. Halliburton stock in 2002=$9, Halliburton stock today=over $60.

My rantings on internet forums may be useless, but at least it's something. I advocate a world tribunal be called to investigate 9/11. Give it all the resources it needs to do a thorough, complete investigation. No USA government provided experts. Completely non-biased.

In the words of an illiterate American president: "There's an old saying in Tennessee —I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

If something rivaling 9/11 happens again, the first place to look for suspects ought to be the White House. Cuz we will be damned to hell if we get fooled again.

An explosive scene caught on film by a 9/11 victim

2006-04-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

Bill Biggart died on 9/11 capturing images as the WTC collapsed. The photos taken appear to show an explosive scene.

His pictures seem to answer the question: How do 3 steel-framed buildings collapse in one day? The high def pictures show buildings being blown apart by something other than fires or coming down in pancake fashion. (official explanation)

WTC 7 wasn't even hit by an airplane. It's been said that WTC 7 sustained damage enough to compromise the building's integrity. Fires were also suggested to explain the collapse. There is no clear picture or video that supports the claim that the damage or fire was substantial enough to collapse a 47 story steel frame building. Many of the reports suggest the southwest corner of the building sustained a large amount of damage. If this is what is being blamed on the collapse, shouldn't the building have listed to the southwest and come down in a more assymetrical way? Instead, it came straight down into it's own footprint...as buildings do in controlled demolition.

Never forget Bill Baggart or any of the people who died on 9/11 or who have been killed fighting the never-ending war on terror.